lionheart

by ied

Summary:

Katsuki remembers a few things, some fragmentary codes, a faulty circuit, and one name. Izuku.

Chapter 1: the waxing crescent

Notes:

eng is not my first language. it’s exactly what it says on the tin! there is nsfw content sprinkled throughout the entire story, and it fluctuates in density.

cws: for gender non-conforming izuku, afab terms used, as well as some characters misgendering izuku (non-maliciously, in the next chapters). if the premise makes you uncomfortable, please do not read or make it a point to let me know in the comments, thank you!

enjoy! <3

 

 

When humans die, a few flashes of their past life zap through their mind, activated by some heightened activity, thought to have something to do with oxygen deprivation or a surge of neurotransmitters. The such.

When Katsuki died, all he remembered was the machine oil coagulating in his throat, and a face. A beautiful, troubled, flushed face that watched with great agony as Katsuki choked on his own circuits and lost all connection to what this world was, to its icy clutch and to its vexing character. To choke so hard in the face of someone so beautiful had been so fucking embarrassing.

And then.

There was the darkness.

No echo.

No blue, magnetizing light. Just pure, encompassing darkness and its silence. And then, Katsuki was dead.

 

#

 

“Hey!”

“What?!”

“It’s this way, fucker. The harpoon—”

“Aish, fuck your harpoon!”

The smell of fish is almost nauseating. The nets caught around his limbs barely budge. Katsuki cannot see beyond this sea of nothingness, but his sensors are back online, he can understand a few things, and a screen lights up underneath the darkness of the nets—suddenly, the basis of information floods his mind.

[Name: Bakugou Katsuki.

Age: Estimated young adult, estimated twenty-five years old.

Model: 129TIOUITW.

Cause of death: Unknown. The code does not flow back to the impact, please, proceed with caution.

History: Unknown. The code does not flow back to the impact, please, proceed with caution.

Abilities: Agility, encyclopedic intelligence, emotional sensors, contextual sensors, strength, vision, stability—all calibrated to 3%.

Location: Unknown.

Weather: Unknown.]

Fucking great. He only remembers the basic stuff, like knowing how to curse.

“Um!” A high, light voice calls over the fuss of the sailors, flowing with the wind. “Sorry, but, Akutagwa, sir, that’s my net. I needed to—”

“Oi. Mayumi,” the old man grunts, “you own this boat?”

Stunned silence follows, allowing the rocking of the boat to squeak on its hinges, for the waves to lap softly above the draft.

“… No?”

“You bring money on this boat?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then keep pulling the net, lil’ girl. We ain’t got all day.”

Katsuki remains still, constrained by the rope, listening to the fussing and the distant clock resounding in the distance, the seagulls circling and being shooed off by one of the old sailors, as the boat rocks, docking in place. Voices pile on top of each other, the distant sound of machines working paint a clear picture in Katsuki’s mind—a port, somewhere on the coastline, far away from the suburbs, it must be underneath the capital.

“But I didn’t even get to… Never mind.” Mayumi, the girl, seems to pout, dragging her stubborn feet towards Katsuki’s net.

“Wha’ was that? You mouthin’ off again? Mayumi, you can’t keep thinkin’ like that. We’re all winnin’ our bread here.”

“I know,” she acknowledged, humble.

“Then you need to keep your head up and work hard, kiddo. That brat won’t be here all the time to take your side—”

“Oi!” A voice carries over the wind, and Katsuki listens in—more trouble. “You gossiping about me now, Akutagawa?”

About every single sailor on the boat groans, greatly displeased. “Here we go.”

“Whatchu doin’ here, brat!? I told ya, leave Mayumi alone when she’s workin’!”

“Naoko!” Mayumi shouts, great affection and worry built in there, “I told you I’d be fine, you need to go home—”

“Here’s your money.”

A great silence falls over the boat. There is sunlight warming the side of Katsuki’s face, sneaking through the flapping of the fish and the rope.

“You seriously payin’ for a whole net of fish? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Well,” the voice seems imperious, the boots heavy as she makes her way towards Mayumi. “My lady wanted the fish. She’ll get the fish. Simple as that.”

“Naoko, don’t…”

“Shush.”

Another great silence.

A grunt is given in response, an acceptance of some sort. “Fine. Go get your boat, Mayumi. I ain’t helpin’ ya haul that net off.”

“Really? But I can’t—”

“Y’can use the steel cable, just get it out of here, already.” Then under his breath, “All this for a bunch of fish. These girls, seriously…”

Flipping the camera back to them: Mayumi whispers, fervent and serious, as they approach the net, “I told you I could handle it, the plan was to—”

“What? Distract them?” Two pairs of hands start hooking the net together back onto the ramp. “Baby, this is an android we’re talkin’ about. They’d sell it for parts.”

Fuck. Wait.

Then, all along, they must’ve known Katsuki’s in here. Barely floating above the line of consciousness.

“Don’t call me baby right now. I’m mad at you.”

A greatly endeared laugh is pushed out through her nose. “God, you’re the cutest. C’mon, come here, baby, why won’t you kiss me?”

“Leave me alone,” Mayumi seems to have pushed her away, but laughter sneaks in, raspy and sort of squeaky, “seriously. Please, let’s fix this. C’mon, we don’t have all day. We need to help him.”

The rumble in Katsuki’s system almost startles him.

In the unknown void stuck inside his mind, a memory projects itself, a forgotten recording from what seems to be a lifetime ago, encased in blue light and corrupted little glitches. “But we have to help him!” Someone insists, and now, looking closer, the—pretty, flushed, freckled, troubled—face is staring at Katsuki, a pair of doe eyes filled with great sorrow. “Poor thing must’ve broken his wing.” The scenery is not detailed, but grass spreads underneath his feet. “C’mon, Kacchan, we need to do something.”

The memory ends, and it is as if Katsuki’s world loses that foreign light again. Everything tilts to the side, even the satellites lose their course, crashing against the gnarled mountains.  

[System shutdown… 1%... 27%... 59%... 89%... 90%... System shutting down…]

Then, once again.

Ice and darkness.

[Shut down complete.]

 

#

 

When the system reboots, it does so with an annoying little ping.

[System back online!

Abilities: Agility, encyclopedic intelligence, emotional sensors, contextual sensors, strength, vision, stability—all calibrated to 89%.

Location: Kagoshima.

Weather: Mild.]

Katsuki’s first instinct is to get back onto his feet, now that the wires are attached and the autonomy is back onto his hands and. The ceiling is blank. Katsuki pauses. Daylight spills in, Katsuki’s tied to a table with leather belts. Cautiously, he settles back down.

“You’re awake,” a voice comes from the doorway. His vision flips as if smacked to the side. A brunette, small woman pushes a wild strand out of her face. “Oh my God, it worked!” She sounds hysterical, the floor plans and papers and ruler tumbling out of her grasp. “I can’t believe it worked! Mayumi, Mayu! Mayu! Come here! Mayumi!”

The ruckus is enough to make a high keynote resound in Katsuki’s ears.

“Fuck,” he whispers, which earns a moment of silence from her. He shakes off his head, movements strained. “Can’t you fucking tone it down!”

“What?” Mayumi steps in—freakishly pink hair, a fishing hat with a small harpoon pin slithered through, out of place compared to her unassuming, girlish face. “Oh my God! Naoko! Naoko, Naoko,” she slaps a palm against the aforementioned woman. “What, what, what, what do we do?”

“Uh,” Naoko advances, a greatly spooked Mayumi coiled around her arm. “Hi? Stranger? Mr Robot?”

Katsuki glares, already sick of this one.

“Who the fuck are you? Why am I here?”

“Actually,” it is, once again, Naoko that is brave enough to speak. “We don’t know, we just—”

“Gimme a good enough reason not to get outta here and burn this place down.”

Mayumi blabbers for a response, while Naoko simply purses her lips.

“Hey, if you’re so smart and capable, why were you stuck in a fish net? In parts, mind you? Huh?”

“I don’t know, weirdo. Y’think I’d be here,” he pulls a bit on the belt tightened around his wrist, to make a point, “if I knew?”

“Well, be nice, and I might consider tellin’ ya.”

“What she means to say is,” Mayumi placates him, still burrowed in Naoko, “we don’t know, either. I work with Akutagawa, a sailor, in the mornings we go across the golf to fish, and everyday it’s the same routine, really, I swear. But last night, when I was, uh, browsing, I saw your hand. And I got scared, so I swam in, and well… parts of you were just, floating around… I thought I couldn’t get you out of there safely, and um, whole, without some help, so I put you in the fish net and we brought you here.” She nods, slowly. “Naoko put you back together. She’s a very skilled engineer.”

The dark-haired woman suddenly smiles with great mischief and pride. “Yes, I am.”

“You?” Katsuki frowns, and scoffs. “Suppose you got lucky.”

“Man, for a robot you sure got a lot of personality. What, they replaced it for intelligence?”

Katsuki does not have a meter for blood pressure—as there is little to no blood flowing in his veins—but he swears his eyebrow twitches.

“Don’t you ever say that again,” Mayumi scolds her. “That is so rude and inappropriate.”

Consternated, Naoko mouths with difficulty. “Sorry, sorry.”

In that moment, Katsuki decided that the one with pink hair is acceptable.

“So, um,” Mayumi tries, “do you… know how you got here? I’m sure it must’ve been a crazy month for you.”

Katsuki frowns, left to drift. “What?”

“Y’know. I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in there, but now they’re calling it the Clash. Stupid name, if you ask me.”

[Searching data base…]

Somehow, instinctively, Katsuki knew to access the ribbon on the side of his vision, expanding and glowing in hues of blue, offering a bunch of options if he concentrated hard enough. Somehow, Katsuki knew there were seven continents, that the world is greatly relying on robotic help, that the Smaug fumes and pollution are causing the population to decline, and that great poverty awaits anyone from outside the capital. Low life, high tech. But still, no information beyond a name, no memory of his to remember.

[Corrupted files, format is not accepted. Please convert the files to the correct format or input new hard disk.]

“I don’t,” Katsuki replies, curt.

They glance at each other. A silent understanding seems to dawn onto them.

“So… you don’t know… what happened? You don’t remember anything about this event? And you don’t feel anything? Nothing in any particular way, like angry? Confused? Heartbroken?”

“I can’t feel shit, genius.” The system seems to disagree, but still, Katsuki’s got a few problems to fix, and emotions are far down the list of priorities. The how and the why sit closer to his truth. “And the files in my system are corrupted,” he cautiously watches over their faces, intent to gauge a reaction. “I ain’t got no idea who the fuck you are and what’s goin’ on in this shithole I got dropped in.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Mayumi frowns, “nothing? You don’t know anything? Do you know your name?”

“Yes, I know my own fuckin’ name,” the impatience increases. “Look, kid, if you wanna ask stupid fuckin’ questions then let dumber speak, I think she can take over the scene with that one.”

“Hey,” Naoko scoffs, “what’s your problem? I rescued you! I coulda’ sold you for a good amount of money, y’know?”

“You missed yer chance, then.”

“Just, please, don’t,” she softly places a palm upon Naoko’s wrist, willing her to calm. “It’s okay,” she whispers, then, back towards Katsuki, “If you know your name, then you know who you are, what this world is, and what you were built for.”

What the hell is he supposed to say?

Before an answer could leave him, Mayumi whispers, horrified, “You really have no clue!”

“What about y’all, huh?” An uneasy growl builds in the back of Katsuki’s throat. “Y’all don’t care enough to explain?”

“I am—oh, my God, yes of course! I have to show you!” Then, she advances. “Let me get you out of there, I am so sorry, we just didn’t know if it’d be a good idea to—”

The back of her shirt is snatched by Naoko.

“Don’t just go in there!” She scolds, frowning at a Mayumi that lets the excited motion of her hands now hang limp by the side of her body, shuffling all awkward as she gets scruffed. “I told you, you shouldn’t—”

Katsuki uses the moment to snap the belts cleanly off.

The space around his wrist is sore, it cramps only so slightly, limiting his movement. The skin is smooth, scarless, sturdy and with a single screw punted through the middle of it, as if to hold onto those loose circuits. The sun pours into the room, well-lit and bright, with a bleached quality to it. Katsuki never knew he’d miss the warmth of something he essentially knew nothing of.

“You,” Naoko stumbles a bit, “why’d you stay tied up, then?”

Katsuki glances at her, uninterested, still rubbing over the wrist.

“Would ya have freaked out?” The silence is enough of an answer. “C’mon, then,” Katsuki passes by. The apprehension builds slowly between them, almost comical in the way they move in sync, backing away from Katsuki’s body. “Show me whatcha know and I might let you live.”

Lesson one, learned.

Katsuki should watch his mouth.

When they present him with the reality, Katsuki’s first instinct is to deny it. How could his entire history be erased in the blink of an eye?

“Why…” but he swallows it back, uneasily, suddenly reminded of the short moment of distress from the ship—clear, green eyes. He would never forget a face like that intentionally. Surely, there must be some truth to it. “Can y’prove it?”

Naoko rolls her eyes.

“Just look out the window.”

He glances at Mayumi, who only bites her lip and shrugs, unsure. “I mean, it could be a lot to take in, but yeah. It’s better to just see for yourself.”

Their house is sectioned in a simple ground floor, a strange, illuminated room with machinery, then the kitchen, a simple living room, with furs and dark magenta coloring, flowy curtains and the such. But now, glancing out the window, Katsuki can see the valley, the hill that leads into the sea, the loud, coagulated noise of ships docking in place, seagulls over the scattered smoke clouds and fish. Fish and fish and fish, people going down, soot over some faces that knew the burden of hard work, children, machinery. Clearly, this city is not doing well in terms of wealth, the port must be the one thing that keeps them afloat.

However, looking up, there’s the water tower.

The billboards.

A lonely bus stop leading down.

Facades of buildings.

They all have one thing in common, and that is Katsuki’s face.

He almost reels back, until the words insist themselves upon his brain.

Android…

Newest model…

Look!

Read more…

… no tax included… 

… savior.

… Hero!

Who knows… maybe you could get… !

… maintenance would not include…

Limited edition… with new improvements…

Model 129TIOUITW is…

Bakugou Katsuki, the one and only android that can improve life as we know it!

There is his face, blond, ashy hair, crimson eyes, a dark compression shirt lined with silver tendrils of light, highlighting the shape of his body. The pose, the title—in every sense of the word, Katsuki looks like a product, meant to be intimidating, cutting. But some of the ads seem old, chipping at the edges. And then, past the oppressing sunlight, the walls seem to be lined with some flyers, hidden beneath graffiti that spells, “Down with the Es! Water should stay on Earth!” and “Free the people” and “FUCK RAIDEN!!!” along with other posters.

There, someone glues down one poster of many, again with Katsuki’s face but paired with a big, red sign of, WANTED, WHETHER WHOLE OR IN PARTS, painted underneath.

The fuck did Katsuki do?

“Well,” it is Naoko’s voice that brings him back, “I told ya’d be better to see for yourself.”

Still gazing out the window, towards the vast skyline, where the sea seems to swallow the clouds, a few bells ring. An old lighthouse with a broken light sits amongst the waves. Quickly, Katsuki reaches for the menu by the right side of his vision, suddenly expanding in options. Instinctively, the system provides him with the option to scan the environment—all over, he is met with various images. Clutter, garbage, the market filled with metal parts being sold for nothing, poverty, a great line that divides the prefecture from the capital, teenagers getting in trouble with the android soldiers posted at the docks. There’s neon lights, strobing colors, metallic ridges lining the streets.

Suddenly, Katsuki sort of understands what world he has woken up in. His world, it seems like.

“What happened?” Katsuki asked, frowning through the onslaught of information. “Did I piss someone off, or?”

“Well, yeah? And no…? Kind of, I guess,” Mayumi rubs a finger underneath her nose, still too apprehensive to look him in the eye. “Long time ago, y’were the first hero model pushed by Raiden, if you check here,” she gestures to her own cheek, “you’ve got a scar.”

Katsuki feels over it, the ridges unfamiliar and foreign. Is it skin? Is it some synthetic material weak enough to bear these sorts of marks?

“That used to be your brand. Raiden Incorporated is the biggest company operating here, everything that you see—the money, the buildings, the rail station, the docks—they own it all. But wealth is concentrated in the capital, so there’s not much for the rest of us left.”

“They tried to build something, or someone,” Naoko keeps on going, “who’ll reassure the people that things are changing, that there’s no villain really. But everythin’ went south, I suppose. You were their first and only new gen android, and along the way…” the sun dips underneath a cloud, “things didn’t work out. You went against them for some reason; I am not sure why actually. But the process was halted, they tried to kill you, for good. But I guess that also didn’t work out…”

“Was I supposed to what? Clean people’s houses?”

“Protect them,” Mayumi insists, rubbing her chin.

“Against natural disasters, robbery, crime, disease. You were an all for one deal, my friend,” Naoko gripes.

“But your image wasn’t very family friendly at first, and then some things changed. Guess it was working in their favor. For the rest… I’m not sure… overnight, you were all over the news as this aggressive, loose android.”

Naoko snorts, “He was loose, alright.”

“Naoko…” Mayumi chastises.

“You get it? ‘Cause he was—”

“I got it,” Katsuki interrupts her, “go back,” he impatiently instructs, “you said help ‘em. Help ‘em how? Where,” he takes a deep breath in, then points his palms underneath his chin. “Look. Imma take it real slow when I say this, there’s this gap in my system, and it won’t let me access shit about my past. So everythin’ y’could be sayin’ now could just be a fuckin’ hoax.”

“It’s not—”

“Wait your turn, weirdo,” he points a finger at Naoko, who just gapes at him. Katsuki turns back to Mayumi, “You need to show me all you’ve got. ‘Cause there’s this,” his finger loops in a circle towards his temple, “face. I keep on seein’. I need to know who that is.”

A slow silence descends upon them.

“Uh…” Naoko glances at Mayumi, then scrunches up the side of her lip, as if to indicate his insanity.

Mayumi pays no attention, and kindly asks, “What’d this person look like?”

Katsuki frowns but pushes on. “Dunno, it’s blurry, kinda… but I saw him when I died? Curly hair, freckles, big eyes, he had a mole on the side of his lip…”

Naoko seems to reel back. “Woah, there, that’s a bit specific. You wanna say he also had beautiful, long lashes, or do you need some time to process that, too?”

Before Katsuki could get angry, Mayumi interrupts them.

“I have no idea who you’re talking about…” She rubs a finger over her lip. Katsuki huffs, frustrated, shoulders going loose. “But! We can start by showing you everything, okay? Just be a bit patient.”

#

 

They make Katsuki wear a hood and stroll through the city in plain daylight, in plain sight, too, if that was not enough. Again, the billboards catch his attention. There is a great emphasis on cyberspace, technology, the present seems to be metallic and running on electricity, while android soldiers march down the pavement, faceless, round screens in place of any expression. Katsuki eyes the plasma guns and frowns.

“Why’s everyone armed?” He murmurs, as Naoko strolls confidently up ahead while Mayumi stays behind to keep him company.

“Oh, y’know,” Naoko quietly tries her hand at another sarcastic remark, “everything’s sweet and dandy around here. Just preparing for another civil war.”

“Civil war?”

“She’s exaggerating,” Mayumi frowns. “She really hates those people, but everything’s under control for now. We’re almost at the warehouse, just hold on a bit, yeah? Nothing’s gonna happen.”

There’s a snort, “I ain’t afraid of nothing.”

“You should be,” Naoko murmurs without turning around. From here, only watching her back as she murmurs those unsettling words makes the whole thing a lot more ominous than it is. “Those people tried to kill you once. They won’t just stop.”

For a moment, Katsuki looked around. The hustle and bustle, the ongoing trading conversations, the sharp sound of a drill, another one of a jigsaw, vehicles flying with a slow hum up above, the tall buildings emptily stretching towards the sky as shades of purple and billboards shine brightly. Up ahead, there is Katsuki’s face—impassive, well-lit, evenly shaped, with the Raiden Incorporated brand carved on the side of his cheek with solid, dark ink. It is sort of disorienting, experiencing so much in just a few hours, although Katsuki’s system retained the basic information about how the world’s cogs and wheels turn in place.

Suddenly, Katsuki remembers that face, his face. Those green eyes watching over him at the final system shutdown. If anyone else is confused about his past, somehow, Katsuki just knows this person may carry the answer he seeks.

The warehouse is just an abandoned, old fishing cabin.

“No one ever comes around,” Naoko reassures.

At the base of the water, where everything lays still, the wide image of the city stretches up above. Overwhelmingly bright, overwhelmingly alien.

“Okay,” Mayumi nods, trying her hand at pulling open the big, sliding metal door. Katsuki does it in one push. “Thanks,” she offers meekly. “Just go in… I need to take a moment for my pride.”

Naoko snorts while Katsuki simply walks inside.

Again, there is nothing impressive on the outside. But on the inside… the walls are lined with electrical tools, a few computer screens running through equations Katsuki needs just a moment to understand, a weak blue light falling over the plain table spread in the middle of the room. The windows are covered, the floor is sterile, lined with white granite.

“You hidin’ somethin’?” Katsuki questioned, as Naoko pulls the heavy door closed, ushering Mayumi inside.

“No?” She laughs. “Just got some stuff I’m workin’ on. Y’know. Individual study.”

Katsuki is slowly piecing together the remaining parts of information, but he is about fifty percent sure there are many, many things he has yet to find out. The ribbon on the corner of his vision expands, once again, and shows a new progression. [Initiating environmental scan… Information acquired: Matsuyama Naoko, engineer, possible rebel, does not fall in line with the government’s regulations, illegally owns a lab that does not have a permit. Scan complete.]

“I’m sure,” Katsuki nods. “So? Whatcha trynna do now?”

“So, you just lay down on this table. We try sticking some new cables into you to get a hold of your hard disk. You said it is difficult for you to access information outside of basic configuration.”

“What does that mean?” Mayumi questioned.

“Basic configuration’s in here,” Katsuki touches the side of his left temple. “M’hard disk can be corrupted, but the basic configuration is salvageable. It contains a dump of information about this world, the definition of gravity, the solar system, photosynthesis, basic shit like that—I gotta say, though. There’s nothin’ about anyone named Raiden in here.”

“Interesting…” Naoko nods, already thumbing through different cables. “Guess they knew if something were to go wrong, it’d be best if you couldn’t trace it back to ‘em immediately.” Katsuki takes a seat, abstaining from the urge to feel over the ridges of the scar.  “So, then,” the end of the cable is a simple USB-C connector. “I plug this in, then I can create a sort of analog connection. Live skim through your hard disk, see what you got stuck in there.”

Although there should be a higher chance of risk involved, Katsuki is deeply curious.

And these girls seem naïve enough—or kind-hearted enough—to accept a rogue android in their home without as much as a second thought. There is something old and rusty etched onto his code, promising that he has the emotional range to sympathize, as lost as his memories may be right now. Perhaps by extending the same level of trust, Katsuki may get closer to the answer that he seeks, while his abilities are still calibrated at a staggering 89%. Katsuki wants to push it to one hundred.

“You still contemplatin’ the idea of sellin’ me for parts?”

“Well, yeah. It’d be enough money to feed us for the rest of our lives.”

Somehow, Mayumi keeps quiet throughout this exchange.

“Then what’s stopping’ ya? I’m sure those soldiers are one incident away from tearing this place down. If y’gave me up for exchange, maybe they wouldn’t.”

Naoko smiles, “I mean, you couldn’t blame me for entertaining the idea,” the smile descends into a scoff. “But those people are evil, for your information,” her voice softens, fidgeting with the cable, deeply contemplative and sincere. “Real evil, the type you can’t even comprehend. If you got them mad enough to wanna kill you, you must’ve done something pretty bad. I fuck with that.”

Katsuki, sort of incredulous, huffs, a half-smile forming on his face.

Then, he extends his wrist. “C’mon, then. Let’s try findin’ out.”

The bridge seems to be breached. Naoko smiles while connecting Katsuki to the screen.

At first, everything lights up through a precarious glitch. Nothingness greets them, then a field illustrated with flowers, some sort of base level information access. Of course, once they dip into the hard disk and Katsuki feels the pin-prickle of something uncomfortable digging into his subconscious, they reach a simple conclusion: the footage is corrupted.

Silver lining is—there’s a few files remaining.

“It’s only seven minutes long,” Naoko frowns, “that’s strange.”

“Oh!” Mayumi exclaims, extending her finger, “There! It’s rolling!”

Katsuki watches, enraptured, frowning.

It seems as if he were gazing at a ceiling, suddenly, the perspective changes. A skyline opens beyond the window, suspended above the city. There is a just a simple, small frame presented to them, glitching from time to time. “Hi?” A sweet voice resounds, suddenly, a few curls pop in the camera’s periphery. This person—the same person Katsuki’s seen before—smiles, curling with mischief from up above Katsuki. “You fell asleep again? I thought I told you the couch isn’t good for your neck.”

“That’s him…” Katsuki whispers, greatly confused, while Mayumi squints over at the image.

“His eyelashes really are long…”

Naoko sputters, quietly trying not to laugh. “You can’t be serious right now.”

Back in the footage, a sigh comes deep from within Katsuki’s chest, and the sound of his own voice almost startles him, “I’ll be fine. All them bones are fake, remember?”

The stranger in the video pouts, the image glitching slightly and somehow awakening an edge of endearment in Katsuki.

“That doesn’t mean you should remain uncomfortable…”

Again, the windows glitch.

Now, the skyline is vast, once again, rubble and cement and everything. Looking down, the soft little human is back. From up close, his plain dress shirt and freckles are immensely charming, hair carefully mussed from the wind, reaching on his tiptoes to, to—caress? Katsuki’s cheek?

“You’ve got dirt all over your face,” he murmurs, the upturned corners of his lashes fluttering against the sun. “The reporters’ll be here shortly. Remember what I told you?”

“Flip ‘em all off, then—”

“No! No, Kacchan, no,” he makes a big X sign out of his forearms. “You smile and wave and say you’ve saved everyone.”

Kacchan?

He almost sputters. Mayumi purses her lips, while Naoko carefully weighs the name, almost bursting into laughter.

The Katsuki in the memory groans, and the perspective changes. The freckles atop his face are clear, still, even through the glitches, as clear as his frown. Really.

“Okay, I will…”

“Good!” He cheers.

“Then dinner, together?”

Now, the freckled person bites his lip—and Katsuki, honest to God, swallows. He has registered thousands of faces just by being stuck on a boat, then flying through a market of people, yet no features have caught his attention the way this stranger has. “Okay,” he smiles, great affection building tenderly in his vision. “We can watch—”

The memory glitches, then the next one follows.

“I’ve got this,” the same person laughs, unclasping a necklace, “I thought it might suit you.”

“I don’t need—”

“Hey,” there is the smile again, seeking Katsuki’s gaze through the memory. This time around, his curls coil with moisture, as if fresh from a shower or a hair-upkeeping routine that makes the image seem dewy and sleepy. “You don’t need to need something to accept a gift. Here.”

The necklace is put on.

Katsuki from the memory hooks a finger onto the silver chain, while the Katsuki from now reaches for his chest to find nothing.

“’S nice.”

The smile is cut off, followed by another memory that trickles in.

This time, there is a board meeting. The same person stands still, dressed more formally. The Katsuki in the memory seems unable to move, clasped onto a device that halts his words and movements, probably in order to remain docile during those corporate meetings? Maybe.

“You can’t just put him in there! He doesn’t deserve to—”

“Midoriya.” A person insists. “You need to calm down. You cannot shield him until the end of time. Bakugou is a,” a careful cough halts the words. “Excuse me.”

Katsuki files the name away.

“A what?” The voice sets high on emotion. “Say it. He’s a what?”

A slow sigh sounds out.

“A machine.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I,” he stands still, greatly offended and hurt. “I’m done here. Let’s go, Kacchan. I know you hate these meetings, anyway.” Those tender hands unclasp all the cables and suddenly it seems as if his vision is rebooted, and the screen glitches as shouts resound from around the meeting room, but still, this Midoriya person seems unmoved. He simply caresses Katsuki’s cheek, careful not to touch the branding inscription. “Let’s go home.”

Another scene.

Midoriya is humming in the kitchen.

Another one, with him blowing soap bubbles over the sink in Katsuki’s way. His laugh cracks on the high sounds of it, charming and… different.

The video flows through the footage, again, and again, and again. Midoriya smiling, cooking, passing a piece of paper Katsuki’s way, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. They are all segmented, stuck in different moments of time, but clear and focused. “Kacchan,” he smiles, curiously looking up and down at Katsuki’s dress shirt, “I’ve never seen ya lookin’ so polished, it’s almost funny.”

“Oh,” the smile is obvious, spilling through the words, “You wanna make fun of me now?”

Midoriya bites over his nail, an action that is greatly cheeky and charming. “Maybe?”

“I’ll kill you.”

The following chime of laughter is expected, but it still rings clear and beautiful.

Different cuts flow in one by one.

“You promised you would!”

“Fuck off!”

“Kacchan!”

“No.”

“Why!”

“It’s fuckin’ embarrassing!”

“Oh, c’mon! You lost the bet, fair is fair!”

The Katsuki from the footage groans, then sighs, then eventually opens his arms wide open to welcome a buzzing, affectionate hug. “Thank you,” Midoriya whispers, “don’t worry, Kacchan. I won’t let them take you away from me.”

In real-time, Katsuki swallows once those words are heard. Suddenly, an immense desire to see this person again arises. Strange. Katsuki guesses desire is not something new or foreign for his interface, it immediately recognizes it as a known term.

It flips again.

Music booms through the screen, glitching, the screen is full of steam and flashing lights, the bass reverberating through everything. This time, the frame is blurry, but because Katsuki hovers close to Midoriya, body on body, he can see the pink of his mouth. Those lips part as they intertwine their bodies on what seems to be a dance floor, somewhere stuck on a high level, with strange people and their strange, glowing liquor.

Izuku huffs, around a smile.

“Like this,” his hand seems to hug Katsuki from around the nape, their lips seem to close in on each other. The Katsuki from real-life frowns harder, gripping onto the side of the table, overwhelmed by the options presented to him, by the idea that this stranger is sticking close enough for the warmth to be felt through the screen. “It’s kinda fun once you stop thinking about all the people,” he offers with great affection.

Somehow, Katsuki can tell. It is great affection.

“Mm,” Katsuki responds, hands brave enough to hold down onto his hips. “Y’think so?”

Their hips knock onto each other, a breath both tumultuous and shaky leaves him.

“Kacchan…” he whispers. “If y’could… would you—”

This time, the tension seems to be pulled so tight in the center of this moment, the image freezes over a pair of lashes and a pair of parted, plush, swollen lips. There’s glitter and a pretty flutter and the same Kacchan, over and over again. And it rewinds, and rewinds, and rewinds to the same broken moment.

Katsuki taps the side of his temple to push the footage forward, swallowing around the knot in his throat.

Then, Katsuki seems to be watching over his sleeping form, tucked tightly in the corner of a cream-colored couch, curled over the armrest, his nose and cheek squished endearingly. It is obvious that Katsuki had been watching from the side, and that he had been following the rhythm of Midoriya’s breathing, hence the screen showing the wellness check bar on the side of his vision. Whoever this person is, Katsuki had been concerned enough about his well-being to monitor his pulse, his breathing patterns, the blood pressure.

A single finger reaches out, tracing the curve of his cheek, following the slope atop the bridge of his nose. The Katsuki from now almost steams, collar growing tight from the shameless display of affection.

Then, the frame switches, once again.

There comes the white cover of a sheet, swallowing the world. Some airy giggles pour in, and Katsuki—all the way mesmerized—watches as Midoriya’s lips stretch over a smile, beautiful smile, beautiful lips, beautiful eyes. As if through a foggy memory, the atmosphere falls nothing short of intimate, lighthearted, as he reaches for Katsuki’s hand, tucked safely in bed. “So, then,” he seems unsure, filled with an air of giddy anticipation, “does that mean you’ll stay with me?”

For the Katsuki in the memory, it seems as if saying no is not an option.

Through his own eyes, he watches as he palms the side of Midoriya’s face, “For the rest of our lives.”

Although concerning to see the smile drop so quickly, it does not seem to take away from the moment.

“Really?” Tears coagulate at the edge of his eyes, “Our?”

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere unless we go together.”

“That’s so morbid, Kacchan!” But the laughter is sincere, pure and intoxicating. As if through a dream, something seems to change in his gaze, molten and tentative, biting the corner of a full lip. Then, mortified, Katsuki watches as the screens change and suddenly, he’s got a lapful of a beautiful, moaning angel and then there’s friction underneath the screen and Katsuki groaning off-kilter and then—nope.

Katsuki immediately presses on his temple to skip it, heaving slightly, confused, spiraling. Just who was this person to him?

“Uh…” Naoko chooses that moment to run her big mouth, “so was he—”

“I don’t know.” Katsuki cuts her off, rigid and unsettled. “Just. Don’t say shit.”

Both Mayumi and Naoko mimic shutting off their lips with a zipper.

This time, the frames slide through faster, with shorter emphasis on the same person. Midoriya is seen from a corner of the living room, tucking a bouquet of flowers in a vase, as the sun glints in, washed away by memories and burnt by the summer. Then once again, the frame glitches. There is a room, spread wide open, a banquet or an after-party of some sort, with glinting champagne glasses and long silk dresses and music lilting over the live performance of a piano. In the background, there is Midoriya, surrounded by people and a pool of plants hanging as decoration. Stuck in the friction of the crowd, Katsuki watches, mesmerized, as he simply smiles, then his feet seem to suddenly discover a new way that he could follow.

“Uh,” the frame glitches again, and there’s a quiet street, full of throbbing lights, holograms dancing behind glass, purple and blue and acidic green, a clear night devoid of any stars. Midoriya laughs, surprised, “What is it? Something on my face?”

The Katsuki behind the frame huffs. “Don’t be weird. Thought yer face was dirty ‘cause of these,” then his hands reach for the corner of his cheekbone, flicking softly at the freckles there.

“Hey,” he giggles, blinking an eye shut, “y’know what those are!”

Memories and memories keep flooding his vision. The voice gets distorted; the hard disk is going through its most corrupt files.

“Izuku…” Katsuki seems to whisper, voice tight and grave. “Don’t cry…”

“I’m sorry, I just,” he uses the width of his palm to wipe messily at the tears there. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about this, and you know I hate how these people treat you.”

Izuku.

Suddenly, it is as if it all makes sense.

Now, Katsuki understands. This entire scene is alarmingly disarming.

Izuku.

“Hey,” the most tender reassurance pours from Katsuki’s rough tone. Suddenly, the distance cuts, they are within each other’s space, wiping down the tears, tearing those barriers down, “we’ll be fine. Trust me, Imma be okay. Just trust me, yeah?”

“Okay,” leaning into the touch, Izuku seems to fall for the sweet coaxing, all tenderly red at the edge of his eyes. “Take care.”

Then, the system seems to be slowly approaching its shut down.

On the bottom, the text flashes, [Unable to voice out commands, thoughts, experiences, beliefs. Sound system is damaged, dialogue option frozen. Error, error, error…]

Everything flashes red, and Katsuki blinks quickly through it.

Suddenly, images spread slowly, glitching. Up until Izuku’s face focuses in his line of sight, clearly distressed. It seems as if Katsuki tries to say something, but the same code flashes over him.

[Error, error, error!]

“It’s alright, don’t. They,” Izuku slants his eyebrows in a stubborn frown, while tears fall over Katsuki’s faulty vision. There is a great hitched quality to his sobs, the images seem to be flooded by smoke, by loud sounds of bullets piercing metal, but Izuku stands undeterred. “I really, really wish you would’ve stayed,” all the sobs hitch in a slow, muffled lilt. “Please,” a clear sob, “Don’t do it. Don’t leave,” he whispers, “we still didn’t get to see the,” all of a sudden, the video cuts, the image blurs, the audio gets distorted, “together.”

Again, Katsuki tries.

A hand reaches out, intimately feeling over the slowly dying pulse that flows through Katsuki’s chest, the slow hum of the battery that took the shape of a heart.

[Error, error, &rro%! Error!]

“Oh, Kacchan,” his eyes flutter against the tears. As something doomed seems to fall over the scene, Izuku’s cheek dimples from the effort it takes to contain the sorrow, “I’ll find you again, I promise. B—but in the meantime,” his sob hitches in his chest, “don’t forget me, please.”

But he did end up forgetting.

Then, before Katsuki could respond to the promise, the system starts to shut down. Again, the same troubled, flushed face remains steady as it happens. And the pink spreading through the tears is fascinating. And the screen freezes. Once the footage halts, the frame keeps on glitching. In a corner, a total amount of replays stands; it seems as though the footage had been rewinding emptily in the void for a total of twenty thousand times.

This is it.

There is no concrete answer, really.

A great, solemn silence continues to spread in the lab.

Naoko clears her throat through it.

“Guess we got a name,” Mayumi whispers.

“’M not gonna lie…” Naoko scratches a few fingers over her neck, “I thought we were gonna find some dirt on Raiden not… this.”

Katsuki is unsure whether to say something or keep it all to himself. “If I were to recover ‘em…”

“The full footage? I don’t know,” Naoko offers, brows scrunching up with a hint of sadness. “I could try, I suppose. But I doubt it. These files are as corrupted as they get.”

“What about the rest of ‘em?” Mayumi questioned, pointing onto the screen. The folder “Life” stares at them, opposed to the quick, glitchy compilation that must have flashed in his last minutes of life. “Should we check them out?”

The empty craving spreads bitterly. A yawning maw.

“Nah.” There’s an echo surrounding them, the screen keeps on glitching, buzzing on the low energy it takes to keep it running. Sighing, Katsuki unplugs the cable and rolls back his shoulders. “That’s,” he sighs, unsure of what to say. “Whatever.”

“But, hey,” Mayumi tries to lighten up the discovery, “least we’ve got a name now!”

“We?” Naoko murmurs.

“We’ll help you find this person!” She declares with vigor. “I, I, I, I think it’s a good cause!” Her lips wobble. “There’s clearly something happening, this person tried to protect you, you tried to protect each other, but there was something wrong. There must be something wrong, otherwise no one would be as adamant to have you eliminated!”

In some strange way, Katsuki understands emotions. Right now, he doesn’t understand fear.

“Imma be fine.”

“Not by yourself, you won’t!” She gestures around, towards the big screen. “They know everything about you, and you barely know yourself!”

Naoko and Katsuki watch her for a moment, surprised to see such strong determination in such a sudden burst.

“I guess,” Naoko sighs, gazing towards the ceiling, exasperated, then back around, “we’re doing this, then.”

For some reason, Katsuki finds it hard to believe. “And you’re gon’ do what. Exactly.”

“Uh,” Mayumi stares back at Naoko, while Naoko stares back at her.

“Bring you to the capital? Find this person?”

Immediately, Katsuki’s interest is piqued. Beyond everything on his hard disk, this person has been the most vivid—no, the only one it bothered to preserve. It seemed that their relationship bore great importance, and, for some reason, Katsuki already got attached to those blurry memories. He understands that if he wishes to dig deeper into the world that he is surrounded by, into who he is, into what he was truly designed to do, and into where it went wrong, he needs to find his way back to Midoriya Izuku. And maybe, he could learn how to live again.

“You saw those recordings,” Mayumi explained, “they wanted to use you. He didn’t let it happen. I promise we won’t let it happen, either.”

For some reason, Mayumi has been spewing all sorts of unexpected, convincing speeches. Clearly, out of the two of them, she is more skilled at burrowing into people’s hearts, while Naoko only managed to get on his nerves.

“We’ll talk business tomorrow,” Katsuki offers. “Just delete that shit off your history, yeah? Y’never know who’d come in here.”

Naoko splutters, but she obliges, “No one’s gonna waltz in, believe me. This place’s forgotten!”

Katsuki rolls his eyes.

 

#

 

By the end, they rewind some of the more incriminating memories, stocked away to showcase the Raiden Inc. building, the machines Katsuki had been hooked on, the board with different papers strewn around, a world map. They trace each backdrop, each street, the lights are powerful through each frame, everything is buzzing on technology, dark and purple and blue split in pixels on the screen. The club seems to still exist, and the halls they had been invited to were elite events, reserved high above the city where the champagne glittered enough to cover the ash of poverty below the periphery of the city.

Was Katsuki so blind to all of this? Izuku seemed to have opposed most of the things Raiden did, but does complicity stop once you say the right thing? What about everything after?

“I think that’s a fair doubt to have,” Mayumi offers, the three of them now huddled on the floor of the lab, the trek back to the house would have been too long and too suspicious at this time of the night. “But there’s something else telling me that’s not the kind of person he is. So, let’s just wait until we find him, yeah?”

Doubts cloud Katsuki’s mind, but still, stronger than anything, there’s the desire to see him again.

“What if they got to him?” He questioned.

“It’s not something to worry about right now.” When no answer greets her, Mayumi utters once again, not at all desolate. “I know you don’t need sleep but at least try to rest.”

The ceiling stands tall and modern and shaped by white granite, in twisted arrays, bathed in the hum of electricity.

“Both of you are so weird, man,” Katsuki sighs, rubbing over the side of his temple.

“Maybe, but. Hey,” Mayumi whispers from the bottom of the floor. “Do you dream?”

Katsuki keeps on staring at the ceiling. “No,” his voice rumbles, lowered to the ground, weighted by the night.

“Sad.” She offers, shaped awkwardly around the word. “Y’wish you could?”

“What would y’ say is good enough to be a dream?”

“Hm, I don’t know, uh... it has to be really vivid, I guess? It needs to feel alive... and impossible... sometimes scary, sometimes beautiful.”

“Then I don’t.”

“Maybe that’ll change.”

Katsuki snorts, “I doubt it.”

“A lot of things seem to be changing.” She turns around, while Naoko snuggles deeply into her shoulder, Mayumi’s cheek pillowed across her own palm. “Dreams shouldn’t be found only during sleep.” The lip bite is slow, contemplative, before, “Good night, Katsuki.”

“G’night,” he grunts.

 

#

 

And the upcoming evening arrives.

Mayumi prepares some bags and makes sure the hood fastened over Katsuki’s head is secure.

“I’m just saying,” she nods, “this is as much of a secret to us as it is to you. We don’t know what we might find in there, and I don’t think anyone’ll be happy to see you.” Katsuki closes his eyes, and slightly crouches down by the knees to let her reach higher. Mayumi has gentle hands, does not push and pull, nor does she linger, perfectly polite.

“Yeah, I think that was clear when they chopped him up and left him to drift in the sea,” Naoko offers, from where she is leaning against the wall, watching in closely with hands crossed over her chest and a frowny disposition.

Mayumi and Katsuki both huff away under their breaths, most likely for different reasons.

“In any case,” she takes a pause to see if the clothes do fit him in a way meant to conceal his identity. “This should be enough for now. And here,” a hand is extended, a small, flat and holographic screen staring at him. “This is how we communicate; this device contains a lot of information. Here, take it.”

“Do I gotta sync up to it?”

“It’d be better if you won’t,” Naoko places a hand on it before Katsuki could think twice about it. “Just in case you lose it.”

“Fine.”

The move seems way simpler than he had thought. In truth, the whole place is plagued by Smaug emissions—the toxic smoke spreading across the country—along with haggling booths overflowing with rare metal pieces glinting in the light, fish pillowed on clods of salt, the conventional android troop passing by, the RINC insignia emblazoned on the back of the uniform. Unwillingly, Katsuki turns around, and an image glitches through his mind. An empty hallway with a buzzing, blue light. Blink, then it’s gone.

Strange. These memories flash in segments and, each time, Katsuki is unsure what to make of them.

Plan is: they follow Naoko’s shady acquaintances’ suggestion to get a ride on the upcoming cargo train, then off to the capital, just to stay at a dingy hotel owned by a person which trades their goods in intel and their secrets in cash. The entire time, Naoko flits her gaze in between him and the world around them, stepping carefully on the checkered pavement.

“You’re bein’ weird,” Katsuki sighs.

“You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m like when I’m being weird.”

“Yeah, ‘s a constant battle for you, I bet.”

“Hey, hey.” There is a shadow of a smile, a ticked little twitch. The entire time, she struggles to keep her voice down, her pace up with Katsuki’s. “I’m startin’ to think I should’ve installed a mute button.”

“Then all this hoverin’ you’re doin’ would be for nothing.”

“How so?”

“C’mon,” Katsuki smiles incredulously, shaking off his head. “I know whatchu wanna ask.”

“Oh yeah? Then y’can just give me an answer.”

“No.”

“Oh, c’mon! Please!”

“No.”

“We’re all adults here, right? It’s none of my business, but you were together, right? So like what’s—”

“No.”

“But I didn’t—”

“No.”

“The—”

“Nah,” the corner of his lip gave in a curve.

“Man, don’t be such a wuss. I’ve seen more pussy than you could ever imagine—”

“Nope! No, no. No.” Mayumi intervenes, pulling her back and slapping a palm over her chattering mouth. “Don’t you dare finish that.”

“Mm,” Naoko hums, displeased.

“You ain’t never gonna get an answer. Why? ‘Cause I don’t got a clue either, idiot.”

Naoko is free now, “Hey!” She blubbers for a bit, her lips dry. “But like, how do you feel?”

Helpless, Katsuki simply frowns. There are advertisements everywhere, blinding and obstructive. One of them proclaims, Tired Of Cleaning After Your Cat? The Robo-Kitty Has No Need For Your Care, Just A Charger Is Enough! Katsuki’s eyes fleet over, graffiti, posters, commercials. An older man with graying hair is plastered on a blue background, a politician, with a mustache and devil horns graffitied over, paired with an inked tooth in the middle of his fake smile. Above them, advertisements with fish flow over their heads in overly realistic holograms, tall, tall skyscrapers filled with the same tired flashing lights. On the bottom, there’s another advertisement, a spaceship endorsement, something called the Satellite Communion, The Es, an encouragement to invest into living beyond this Earth. Someone had graffitied over it, remember this is not just a story, this is our future.

“What do you mean?” He allows a fleeting glance to get stuck on her.

“Y’know. How does it make you feel?”

“Ew, Naoko. That’s way too personal.” Mayumi scrunches up her nose, pulling onto Naoko’s sleeve.

“Not! Like that.” She stumbles slightly to the side, bumping into Mayumi. “I meant, isn’t it strange? It’s not that I think you’re unable to—”

“Watch it.”

“To, y’know! None of my business. But I’m just saying, it’s a thing of great importance. He seems of great importance.”

“C’mon, man, just say what you wanna say.”

“Do you feel it, then? The great importance?”

Katsuki tries to feel around for it. What he expects to find is the same steady pulse of the electrical current flowing through his circuits, the steady resolve of an objective output, but instead, there is a strange coagulation of noise. Something that makes the pulse raise and his chest to hurt, manifesting entirely under the guise of something overwhelming. Katsuki is unsure how to navigate such obvious symptoms of, of feelings. Remembering now, he does not wish to deny them, nor does he wish to escape them—this is a mountain he must’ve climbed a long time ago.

“I can,” he settles back onto the crowd, the glint of his crimson eyes is solid, unshakeable. “That’s why we’re going, right?”

“Yeah…” Naoko seems to be mollified, the answer given to her in some way.

“I thought that was obvious,” Mayumi murmurs.

“Hey. You’re getting mouthy all of a sudden. You hungry?”

“No?” She seems upset. Even so, her stomach growls, and it seems to serve in making her embarrassed.

Eventually, Naoko steps away to haggle with someone over the booth, a tall guy with an awful fucking haircut, while Mayumi and Katsuki remain planted on the sidelines as she munches over some pastry Naoko bought on the way here. “Do you want some?” Mayumi asks, offering the treat forward.

Katsuki stares, then looks back over the crowd. “I don’t have to eat.”

“Right,” she says. “Never?”

“There ain’t no need for it.”

“Alright, I get it.” She hesitated, but eventually found enough courage to ask. “Are you feeling okay?”

Again, Katsuki stares, but eventually, his gaze drifts back onto the mass of people.

“Suppose so.”

Yelling cuts over their stilted exchange.

“—couldn’t have been nicer?! I mean out of all the—”

“—yer still the same, I told you. No. You owe me—”

“Oh-ho! ‘S all about money with your fake ass—”

Mayumi glances back at him.

At once, they trudge towards the noise, where Naoko is arguing with all her might, pointing and spitting and almost jumping over the booth. The clamor attracts a few straying eyes, hidden behind woolen overcoats or beyond a curious disposition. Ah, shit.

“I get it, man!” He yells, gesticulating. “We’re all in fucking trouble, hard times, but you can’t keep doin’ this! You gotta pay what you fucking owe!”

“I don’t have the money.”

“That’s a load of bullshit. I know you engineers spend a whole lot of coin on your shitty security systems. Where else could ya have thrown it all away?!”

Naoko sniffs. “On fish.”

He pauses, then shakes off his head. “You’re unbelievable, just go away.”

“I won’t! You promised—”

“God, Naoko, you’re being such a fucking bitch—”

“Hey!” Mayumi yells, now close by, offended.

Katsuki reaches over the counter, takes him by the collar, and uses the leverage to slam his head against the counter. With a thud, the guy passes out cold, slinking to the floor in a messy heap. His wrist is not used to sudden movements, so Katsuki shakes it off, sore all of a sudden.

Mayumi and Naoko stare down at him, then at Katsuki.

Speechless.

The entire crowd is mute save for the traffic and the commercials.

“What. You were gon’ let him talk to you like that?”

Mayumi seems faint, while Naoko raises her hands, threading them through a few strands of hair, pulling with all her might and whisper-yelling, “What the hell did you do!”

Heavy steps echo in the distance, white uniforms push through the troves of people, and suddenly, it is as if his system recognizes how compromised they are. Ah, shit. He should’ve thought this through instead of acting upon the first instinct fighting its way onto the surface—for now. Well. For now, Naoko pulls on his shoulder and shoves him by the back of the booth, throwing over the first bundle of plastic barrels, sending them rolling.

“Oi!” One of the soldiers yells, fallen to the ground.

“Fuck!” She yells as she runs, the two of them following her lead. “Never fucking do that again! Don’t hit people like that! You just can’t!”

“You were gettin’ nowhere with that fucking—”

“I don’t care!” She yells. “Never do that again!”

Naoko sneaks them quickly through the slithering, tight corners of the plaza, earning surprised gasps and stares as the troops follow in closely. A few stand owners yell after them, another one aims a bunch of yuzu fruits, splattering on the metal pillars, while noise coagulates over the chase. The plasma gun fires its first shot, hitting an unassuming fish stand. Fuck.

“What about the train?!” Mayumi yells, still furiously eating as she runs.

“I—don’t do that! You wanna die choking?!” Naoko clutches the pastry, spins around, aims it back at the crowd. It splatters against a running soldier, allover the glass window of the headguard.

“Hey!”

“There’s no ticket—one’ll leave right now so—if you just fuckin’ hurry! Argh!” She yells, heaving. “I hate being a good person!”

“I could kill ‘em all,” Katsuki suggests.

“No?!?”

“No!!!”

“Okay, okay, chill. Jesus.”

Amidst the noise, Katsuki presses twice on his temple, instinctively.

This is the most activity his system seems to have experienced in a while, so the interface is going crazy, everything set haywire, beeping with weird rhythms and instructions. [Cooling prtocols kicked in motion. Orientation ↻ … Processing. Turn left for Station 4745. Train IAHTSY78Lavish leaves Station 4745 now. ETA: 6 a.m. GMT+9. ⇆⇌⇌ Directional latitude… calculating…]

The plasma gun misses them just so, sending sparks against the pavement.

“Left!” He yells.

Then, he aims, forearm stretched, and although rusty, a blast of some kind burst out of his palm and sends the metal door of the cargo train splintering and bending under the heat, curiously bullet shaped.

It makes the wagon lose its momentum, already starting its trek along the electric line.

Katsuki seizes Naoko by the armpits, throws her like some luggage inside, then bends over, hauls Mayumi over his shoulder and jumps in. The wagon does not bend, nor does it sway with the impact, and he opens up his arms, allowing Mayumi to climb down with a gentle crouch. They both seem frazzled, leaning against the wooden boxes sealed shut. The entire perimeter is isolated, stacked, separated by a metal door safety proofed with an access key—lucky.

Looking back, the soldiers halt their run, but not without aiming a few stray shots that pass over the side. The train climbs up, over the suspended railway, zapping over the city. Amateurs.

The entire city’ll be on the lookout, so they’d be real lucky if this wagon went unchecked.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Mayumi whispers underneath her breath, palm settled over her fast-drumming heart.

Naoko stares into nothing, then flicks her gaze up at him.

“Nice aim.”

Katsuki clears his throat. “Yeah.”

“Please,” Mayumi looks towards the ceiling, “never do that again.”

At the next connecting line, they switch onto another lane, admittedly easier now that there’s nobody chasing them down. The system does not register any abnormal adrenaline spike, seemed to be overly familiar with this scenario, Katsuki’s mind acting on its own. He stretches out a hand in front of him, slowly shaping it into a fist, tracing the curve of it, its sturdy form. His first thought had been to hit, maim, ready for the kill. He doesn’t know whether it’s programmed or if it’s natural.

“Didn’t look like anyone noticed who you were,” Naoko whispers, crouching down amidst the ballast, each step sending a bit of noise. “So that’s good.”

“What about you?”

“We’ll be fine,” Mayumi sighs. It is late into the night, way past midnight by now. “Not the first time this happened.”

There are a few things he can recall—slight irritation, an unparalleled desire to be propelled into the eye of the storm, some hunger for the real world. They are all linked to different clusters of his mind, Katsuki can recognize their muted scream, therefore his actions seem to be ruled by them. For some reason, his throat is tight when he says, “Didn’t think that through. ‘M sorry.”

Fuck. Seems like apologizing wasn’t his forte.

“Don’t sweat it,” Naoko reassures, hauling Mayumi onto the open, dark wagon. “I’m sure you’ll get to use those bullets soon enough.”

“Naoko.”

“Just sayin’.”

The dawn breaks over them in splinters of sunlight, and Katsuki allows a moment to crack the metal door open. His back is plastered against a wooden box, one knee bent at an angle. Now, the city spreads wider, higher, melded with the neon. This must be it.

Somewhere, in the back of his head, another flash of a memory plays. A simple scene, the river bed of some forest, reeds and weeds unfurling on the sides. And a meadow. Wide, open, flickering over him. Then, a green pair of eyes, fluttering not unlike the bent willow of the grass, flowing with the breeze.

“Any thoughts?” A person seems to ask. “Ah, I knew you’d be picky. How about we just go past M7 this time around? Promise I’ll let you &%#567.” The dialogue shatters in the middle. “Ah? Thanks? If you’ll offer me your jacket each time we go out you’ll seriously freeze to death, Kacchan.”

Katsuki blinks.

The memory’s gone.

Hours pass, and Katsuki still doesn’t have it within himself to try and look for the recordings.

Needing to distract his wandering eyes, Katsuki zones back onto the scene before him.

From where he is hidden, Katsuki looks down. Blue is the only color stretching over the horizon, cloudless and clear, speared by silver and metallic bridges and high buildings that seem to teeter from the edge of the planet, busier, running, projecting on screens, billboards, noise, the hum of electric life buzzing underneath it all. There is a whole new world stretching beyond what he had imagined, and it is one thing to have screen captures and videos and holograms of any place in the world at his disposal, and a whole other thing entirely to see the real deal spreading before him. It’s the type of shit that makes his eyes water from the high altitude, makes his chest pound with the movement, real and unforgiving.

Maybe Izuku is over all the scattered lights blinking in the distance or the cloudy towers suspended above ground. Maybe his favorite part is also the sky.

Naoko snores against the boxes, while Mayumi watches from a safe spot beside the open door, hair fluttering against her cheeks, flushed from the morning dew.

“It’s only gonna get worse from here,” she murmurs.

Katsuki glances at her. “Yeah? Why the enthusiasm?”

“The bullet train’s good for getting us in, dunno if we’re gonna get out.”

“’S alright,” Katsuki frowns against the wind. “Imma make sure of it.”

 

#

 

The capital is huge, busy, interminably colorful.

It is strange, to blink then suddenly find himself in the middle of it. Naoko and Mayumi are no longer so wary of him, instead, there is an unspoken agreement that they perceive him as some sort of hound dog. After so many evenings spent running, talking, staring at the interminable darkness spread ahead, the breach must be traversed, the time eases their strained connection. And although the journey takes shape, it takes them weeks to place any leads.

Some highlights of their recent activities had Mayumi crouched on the floor, forearms covering her head while a gust of wind set in the distance and sent her hair flying. Once or twice, they got kicked to the curb after rough housing in a pub, their belongings thrown at their feet. Cursing, stumbling, shooting, fighting—they all seem absolute rules of this world beneath the clouds, while the kingdom up above spread with artificial streets and pavements, engineered to float and create an obvious divide between classes. The acidic atmosphere on the bottom is indisputable, gorged with security and buzzing safety measures.

Naoko’s the one that engineers the entire journey, but also the one that seeks trouble. A hummingbird to a flower, a busy gravitational field. 

And fuck, when Katsuki gets shoved against an electrical fence and convulses through the aftershocks, it makes it all the more clear.

“Naoko.” He had threatened.

“Sorry!” She called out from above the wall.

Naoko had a propensity to maintain obscure and vague relationships with people. The mystique is indisputable, her cunning nature is similar to that of the politicians making their speeches above the skyline, projected in the mud. But here, Naoko’s success rate is guaranteed to get some planets moving.

Sometimes, Katsuki’s mind flashes through the memories. And sometimes, the experience’s… one of a kind.

The memories flash with no forgiveness. The very first time Katsuki saw them, the feeling ebbed slowly, unassumingly. The three of them were overlooking the city, planted at the edge of a building, the wind wheezing through the flashing lights and their otherworldly impact and shine. The sky’s sort of blue, fogged over by Smaug emissions, but way up above, it is all shiny and busy and full. Katsuki does not find any incentive to capture the moment.

“Wow,” Mayumi gasps quietly, hair fluttering in the wind.

A segment snags on his vision. “Wah,” the voice, Izuku’s voice, spills out like sunlight. They stand by the edge of the sea, storm clouds roiling in, his flappy straw hat blowing with the wind. The sand is wet, lapped away by the foamy waves. “Kacchan, the water’s cold, don’t, ah!” He exclaims, once Katsuki pushes him ahead, stumbling and breaking the barrier. “You,” he splutters, through a hearty laugh, “you’re such a brute! Traitor! No, wait—I was just joking, no, no, no.” Another laugh follows, while Katsuki dunks him under the water, seizing him around the waist.

One blink, then it’s gone.

Katsuki almost reels back, pain overturning his insides. 

“You okay?” Naoko prods. 

His sigh is shaky, but Katsuki pushes through. “Yeah, it’s,” the pain shrinks, “nothing” 

Who would have thought it would take so long to find one person? If only he could have burst through an institute or some bureau and demand the paperwork of this person—a picture would’ve also been nice. The people projected on the old cinema screens always tucked their beloveds’ pictures in their wallets, in the breast pockets of their expensive suits. 

Onto the next clue.

Tucked against the wheezing pipes of the factory, Naoko keeps her palm steadily above the band that rolls through all the cogs and wheels, an old man puffing out through a cigarette as he rolls back a shoulder.

“So, you were there for how long?”

A slow drag, the smoke expands.

“Twenty-five years. They know how to get under yer skin. Benefits, promises, expensive gatherings. Then, before ya know it,” his hair brushed the edge of his chin, coarse and silver, same shade as the smoke, “yer part of it. You lock your morals in a box to make a dime, while they make western dollars off of exploitation, poisoning this Earth.”

“Why’d I stay, then?” Katsuki questioned.

The old man looks at him, key stuck in his hand, fighting to set the control panel right.

“Think about it. Us, we have it all set, we get a choice, a life. You had nothing to turn back to and they liked that.”

“Would they have…” Mayumi cuts herself off.

“Oh, they have,” he chuckles, a dry, quiet thing. “There’d been mountains of them. Disposed like trash, filled into small boxes to make new ones. It’s,” a cough cuts his sentenced off, “deplorable.” The key snags, and Naoko steps in. A few practiced movements and the panel blinks back on, lighting up with numbers. “Hm,” the old man acknowledges, impressed.

“Do you know Midoriya Izuku?” She asks, passing the key back.

“The reporter? That kid? I know of him.”

“Where is he?”

“Don’t got a clue, this place’s far away from the heart of the city,” at the dejected sighs, he clears his throat. “Try North. ‘S a club down M10, some young people might know something.”

The scene cuts again.

This time, the memory is soft and summery. There is Izuku, smiling up at him all giddy, a bucket full of strawberries on the ground, handled carefully by gloved hands. A sunny disposition, a beautiful smile, denim overalls, skinned knees—there’s nowhere to hide. His heart leaps out of his throat, familiar with the feeling, happy and relieved to see him again. “Strawberries are always better around this time of the year,” he promises. Somewhere, in the distance, chickens and birds loiter around, a rooster sings. “Wanna help Yagi take Sunshine out? I don’t think she’ll kick you this time.”

Katsuki pulls on his nose, and Izuku complains.

“You got yourself some overalls and think yerself to be a farm expert?”

“I grew up here!” He protests, pawing at Katsuki’s wrist, scrunching his eyes shut. “Of course I know stuff!”

It ends.

He tries to cling onto the feeling, missing it already.

Mayumi asks, rocking side to side against the wagon, “You think we’ll ever find anything?”

Against the moving glass, Katsuki watches his reflection, filtered with the sun, the green spots of metal reflecting off of it. “I’ve got to.”

They made it to North. A girl talks to them while the rest of the world spins around them in the background. “Midoriya?” She quips, a pair of feathery wings taped to her back. “Haven’t seen him, since, y’know.” She pointedly looks at Katsuki.

“Any idea where he might be?” Naoko asks.

“Dunno,” a careful glance around. The rest of the club is darkened with muffled music, with loud voices and their chattering. All the noise gets stuck beyond this tucked away table, and she leans in. “He left a while ago, the company I mean. He hasn’t even visited us, not even his neighbors have seen him.”

Katsuki is irrationally overwhelmed by a distant fear.

“Y’could try his old workplace, though,” she offers, as a way to placate them. “They’re very anti-RINC so you won’t have to worry about a thing.”

His ghost seems to have left an impression on many places, they all seem to know of him, yet all he is left to do is haunt these dwellings. And even when the metaphorical floorboards creak, only a breeze sneaks in, reminding Katsuki of how lonely it is when no memories follow. A shadow of longing blooms.

Days pass.

They never spend a night in the same place. The summer’s still got a hold over everything. They never take the public commute, and underneath the solid concrete of the street, there is a whole underground railway, intricate complexes reserved for the RINC soldiers, and the construction workers, and for those who engineer the aircrafts.

This time around, dinner unfolds under a neon sign that spells, Half-Price, Full-Plate.

All the lights spread around the city seem, somehow, green. Not a soul in sight except for them and the old lady by the counter, reading a newspaper and coughing from time to time through her perfumed cigarettes.

“Mm,” Mayumi hums around her straw. “No way, no, no, no.”

“Oh, c’mon.”

“No, Naoko.”

“What do you say?” Naoko questioned him, ripping away the paper, lest she took a bite out of it.

But her speech blurs.

All of a sudden, as if submerging from underwater, Katsuki’s greeted by another flashback. Once again, there is Izuku, and his heart traitorously leaps. Fuck, he really did miss him. The smile is shy, a careful head lean follows, cheek brushing his own shoulder, as if hiding from the feeling. “Don’t look at me like that,” he complains, the shine in his eye giving him away, spoiled with the affection. “It’s embarrassing.”

Late into the night, the train rolls down the rail.

“Mm,” Katsuki hums, a hand reaching through the fog to tuck a stray curl away, finger coiling around it playfully. “Like what?” Even through the video, Katsuki’s voice is melted, rough and steady.

“Kacchan,” he whines. “We’re in public.”

“So?”

Emboldened, it seems to be the right thing to say, because Izuku sticks himself close, hugging Katsuki around the bicep.

“You’re making it hard to let go…” A soft mumble, cheek knocking against the material of Katsuki’s jacket, squishing against it. “Now I have to stick next to you everywhere we go…”

“Katsuki?”

Back in his own body, the memory cuts.

Mayumi’s wide eyes are set on him, chewing slowly. “Are you alright?”

As if awakened from a dream, Katsuki swallows, redirecting himself towards reality. The ghost spreads wisps in his system, reminding himself of what it is like to feel.

“What?”

“You here with us?” Naoko settles. “I asked, if a lion and a tiger fought, who’d win?”

Katsuki sighs, “Depends on the context.”

Later in the evening, Katsuki lays back, wanders upon the old imagery of his face. He does not skim through the hard disk, no matter how intensely the urge gnaws at him, no matter how it roils with the boil of the day. The sun’s unforgiving, the possibilities are infinite, Katsuki gets to gaze into an empty ceiling during the night and see the world beyond him. Should that be enough? Should he simply just live? And live through what? He needs to know, he reinforces. His memories, and whatever was left inside that must’ve morphed into the shape of a heart, are entirely consumed by the cold. They crave that sensation of warmth.

Katsuki does not dream this time around, either.

Whatever common room this workplace should’ve had is now plagued by the constant ringtone of line phones, an ancient object compared to the opulent modernity of the world outside. Even now, even here, not much is offered in return.

“Midoriya?” A lady questioned, behind her glasses. “Haven’t seen him since, you know,” she pointedly looks at Katsuki. The latter rolls his eyes. “He was a precious worker of mine, but we were not close.” The space is overcrowded with plants and loose paper, manila folders and ink.

“Any idea what might’ve happened?”

“Not for sure,” she sighs. “I have my own suspicions but what good are they?”

Once they leave, Naoko knocks her head back, pursing her lips up towards the sky. “Well, I hate to say this, but the next place we’re going to is… ugh, that guy’s.”

“You still talk to him.” The narrow, cutting quality of Mayumi’s eyes is unexpected.

Naoko hums, tapping a finger against her pursed mouth. “Well… Not after I stole from him…”

“What! Naoko, you can’t be serious. I thought—”

Katsuki itches to revisit the memory, but he lets it go, afraid of the attachment growing. If it does grow, and it expands until it could fit against the old shape of his want, who is to say what will happen if Katsuki does not find him? Is he supposed to stare at the old horizon and imagine what could have been? Live through these memories? Katsuki wants to see more, wants to know more about Midoriya Izuku, about the life they’ve shared, and about the life Katsuki had.

It seems as if the girls are more stressed now, carefully avoiding the busiest streets and making sure Katsuki is shrouded in the shadows.

When Naoko pushes shoulder first through the door of an old, carefully hidden motel on the periphery of M15, Katsuki can sense the immediate taction of this place, not poisonous but rather precarious, salvaged for those who wish to stray from all the bustle of the public.

Naoko blasts her elbow on the table, while Katsuki ominously towers over her, with Mayumi carefully stuck by his side. The guy behind the counter takes a long, diffused draw out of his electronic cigarette, lighting up in neon orange on that first drag.

“Ya missed me?”

“Get out of my place.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Naoko’s head rolls back in defeat, “you’re still hung up over that?”

The person behind the counter flips his magazine, dragging another long puff and letting the air coagulate in vaporous, fruity clouds. “Wouldn’t you be?”

“C’mon, man. I’ve already apologized.”

“You didn’t.”

“I didn’t,” Naoko guiltily smiles and Katsuki almost groans. “But that can be easily fixed. Here,” she takes a lengthy pause, troublesome and insincere as she drawls, “I’m sorry.”

The guy sighs, long and torturous. His eyes fleet over, then land on Katsuki, “Look, Naoko. In truth, I don’t give a shit that you’re a jackass—you’ve always been one. None of us are above stealing, so whatever. But you really think I’d let you walk in with Raiden’s lost android and just let you be?”

Both of them tense, while Katsuki remains steady.

“I’ll double the price…?”

A sigh, then, directed towards Katsuki, the orange-flavored steam rises again, “Look, man. You’re very unlucky if this is the first moron you stumbled into. I’m sure you’d know better than this, so why the hell are you here? I thought Hatsume might’ve had a tighter leash on you.”

“Who?”

Naoko immediately curses at him to, “Shut the fuck up.”

Silence.

The guy frowns for a moment, taken aback, “You—”

“Hatsume Mei? The engineer? I thought she only designed him?”

“Mayumi, baby. Don’t.”

“Hatsume’s a nutcase. She gets hella attached to everything she works on, but. You just don’t remember, do you?” None of them are swift enough to think of an answer. “That sounds like a mine of gold to me.”

“How much?”

“Two hundred thousand, plus tip.”

“You,” indignance chokes Naoko for a moment, “you know damn well this dump doesn’t deserve this much!”

“Maybe,” another drag, the clouds spread again. “But my silence does. I know what lil’ projects you work on, I know you got the money for weird shit like this.”

“Fine, you scoundrel, I really hope you’ll die soon.”

“Naoko.”

“You’re still such a fuckin’ child. Here. One key, two rooms. You smash anything, you’re done.”

“There ain’t nothing to smash in there,” she snatches the key.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” he shrugs, then gazes towards Katsuki. “Oh, yeah. Come to think of it, Hatsume was never the one with the leash, sorry about that. She was careless in that sense. That was Midoriya’s job, to keep ya in place.”

Ice swarms to the surface.

Katsuki understands, in that moment, what bleeding for two feels like.

The anger boils, spills over, while gravity spreads a white, hot sensation over his scalp.

Immediately, the pulse of Katsuki’s system slows to a dangerous stilt. The screen turns red, circling the target ahead of him, notifications glide in a brisk pace. [Danger: detected. Course of action: determined. Initiating protocols. Loading… ↺] He snatches the guy by the collar, pulling him in, dread flashing over everyone in the room at a bizarre and unexpected speed.

“You said what?”

Mayumi seems overwhelmed by whiplash. Naoko watches, frigid.

“The—”

“Katsuki!”

“Put him down!”

“Now!”

“Calm down!”

“Now. Katsuki. Put him down.”

“Shit—uh. Sore spot I get it,” his twitching hand feels over Katsuki’s steady wrist. “Didn’t know you guys broke up or somethin’, sorry, sorry, okay? Didn’t mean that, c’mon, man,” his hold tightens. His mind spins—broke up? So, then, it had been true, not only was he Katsuki’s special person, but the love, desire, and affection must’ve been mutual, something to be preserved even in a dingy, forgotten corner of the world.

Katsuki’s interest zeroes back in.

“You know where he is?”

“I don’t but—” the hold tightens, “I, I could find out! No price. C’mon, ‘s a good deal, loosen up, yeah?” He slaps a hand over the hold, trying to tap out. The vape had long clattered on the desk, smashing on the side and emptily lighting up in a morse code pulse.

Mayumi pulls on the back of his clothes, right over the center of his back.

“Don’t do it,” she implores. “It’ll just make everything more difficult. Katsuki. Please.”

Katsuki looks into those eyes, slowly tilting his head to the side, initializing a scan. In a few moments, the interface lasers over all the documentation hidden in the room, absorbing everything. Somehow, there is nothing of importance—some rebel plans, evidence of illegal smuggling, substance abuse, large-scale fraud, tax evasion, grand theft, the such. No sign of Midoriya Izuku.

“Get somethin’ that’d help me find him, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, man.” His shoes slip against the wooden side of the desk, trying to steady the hold. “You ain’t gotta be so serious, huh? Imma do it for free, Naoko’s my friend, man.”

“Oh, I’m your friend now.”

“Naoko.”

“How do you know him?”

“All over the place, man. Swear it’s nothing weird. Those in the North really like him, I swear, he’s just got lots of friends in shady places. Hatsume’s into some illegal shit, too, y’know. What, you think all technology in this country passes all the protocols? It’s just a rule of association, man. You know. Nepotism, in a way,” he keeps on blabbering.

Naoko laughs at the side.

“Don’t laugh!” Mayumi flounders, exasperated, whisper-shouting. “Do something!”

“Dunno, I’m kinda enjoying this.”

Katsuki lets go, slamming him back into the chair. “Tomorrow. ‘S late now. You better have something for me. You try to call anyone,” he points once the man makes a sudden movement.

“I wouldn’t,” he heaves, irritated.

“The files there, underneath your permit,” Katsuki flicks his chin over, “I got it all scanned, that reason one. Reason two, try some shit with me and I’ll bust your face in and burn this fucking place to the ground. I ain’t playing.”

“Jesus,” Mayumi whispers, stressed the hell out.

Naoko cackles. “Man,” she wipes off a stray tear. “Wow,” she seems to be in pain, “my ribs hurt. Wow. That was so good.”

For good measure, Katsuki leans over the counter.

“Next time, keep his name outta your mouth. We good?”

The guy simply gives off an incredulous huff, fixing the cap set atop his head.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Katsuki maintains a moment to stare him down, before slamming his hand twice on the plank, the little call bell launches itself to the ground in a tired flinch, gaze already set off-handedly on the staircase. “Let’s go, then,” he ushers the girls to step ahead.

“I almost had a heart attack,” Mayumi whispers, too annoyed to even gaze in their way.

Naoko and Katsuki simply keep on walking, sharing one silent look.

It is true.

This place leaves a lot to be desired, but they still take it for what it is. Although Katsuki stated that he does not need rest, Mayumi shoves a rolled blanket in his hands and tells him to settle down, at least.

“You good?” Naoko questions, ready for sleep.

Surprised to see her approach, he simply grunts, unfolding the blanket on top of a chair, the leather fraying at the edges. At the first touch, it creaks and offers out a cloud of dust.

“Yeah.”

While coughing, Naoko waves a slow hand in front of her face. “Man, that’s an old chair. But, uh, guess that confirms my question, then.”

“What question?”

The lights shine in through the wide, wide-open window. The whole city is gliding through flickering lights, holograms of advertisements fluttering around, blue in this time of the evening. Toothpaste commercials, car oil endorsements, different skincare products floating through the darkness. Everything is quick, hard to pinpoint, alive and continuously awake with noise.

“Oh, y’know,” she shrugs, “about the great importance.” Instead of offering an answer, Katsuki chooses to keep silent, finally dusting off the chair enough to deem it alright for use. “Look,” her voice loses the usual mischief and desire to awaken his rage. “I think I kind of get it. I can’t imagine life without Mayumi. I—damn, urgh. This is hard,” she scratches at her scalp, unsure, teetering by the edge of making this more awkward than it needs to be. “Maybe you don’t remember him entirely, but the body keeps the score, you know.”

Katsuki does not know how to vocalize this amalgamation of feelings. Are they feelings? It might be love, twisted with grief, a great yearning for an answer, maybe. Maybe love is too small of a word to contain what it all meant. He is not human, but maybe that never mattered, anyway. The doubt could eat away at his circuits and hardware and maybe there still would be no answer. He knows he is equipped with fine-tuned abilities, configured to an outstanding 90% at the moment, but what weight do they bear in the face of someone who managed to outdo him with a few videotaped memories?

“What’s this? You trynna comfort me? I don’t need comfort.”

Naoko stills for a moment, and their eyes connect. His are an artificial red, blending into a burnt brown of some kind in the darkness. Naoko’s are indecipherable right now.

“Sure you don’t.” That little façade of hers is lifted once again, waving two fingers around. “Good night, hotshot. I’ll see ya tomorrow, hm?”

Katsuki sighs, falling down against the chair and almost sending himself tumbling back to the floor. The hinges squeak, then they launch him back in place.

“Do I have a choice?”

From the doorway, her laugh carries on, before settling with one last little observation. “Look, if there’s something bothering you, just skim through that footage again. The final footage might have been seven minutes, but there’s no way you don’t have some clustered memories in there that you didn’t want anyone else to see. Just take a look and make yourself feel better, yeah?”

“Don’t—” But the door slams shut. “Fucker.”

The darkness remains.

Katsuki does not bother to turn on the television, he is content enough to gaze out at the wide horizon stretching before him, shifting through every minute. He thinks about the natural order of things, his next course of action, about what tomorrow might hold for them, his existence, the way it is so intrinsically tied to a life he knew nothing of—and the thing is. It wouldn’t hurt to.

Right?

It would not hurt to know more.

And, silly enough, now that Katsuki knows he is not alone, he wants to dive into this, this unknown feeling. Katsuki already misses the image of him, the shape of his smile, the way he bit over his lips in that oddly charming way of his.

In some roundabout way, those lost memories do belong to him.

The night gathers at his feet. Curiosity gnaws through his heartbeat. Against the darkness, a single shadow of the lamp flickers through, as Katsuki touches on the ribbon. He navigates through the menu.

[Settings. Stored data. Folder “Life”. Screen captures.]

For a moment, he breathes in, not out of necessity but rather out of a desire to calm. Katsuki skims through them.

There is a photo of a clear, blue sky with tight clouds that seem to hover over a sunny day. Then, a pond is captured, a frog leaping on top of a lily pad, then, there come the very same green eyes. Izuku is smiling wide open towards the camera, frozen in movement as if to push Katsuki’s shoulder away—his skin is tan and freckled and dewy from the summer feel, he assumes, with a silly fishing hat that’s got strings hanging on the side of his cheeks. Katsuki hesitates. He lingers over the image, traces all the angles and lines and the ins and the outs.

Dazed, he flips through them all.

Leaves spread on a bench, old maps from dusty books, plans of his configuration, a board showcasing some new adjustments to his system, a long, winded road down a hill overlooking the sea.

Another picture. This time, Izuku is standing in front of a supermarket, the night is stuck with them in the parking lot, a NONSTOP sign illuminating everything in shades of green. He is dressed in plaid pajama pants with a silly tangerine themed shirt and proudly holding a tangerine flavored soda can, cheeks puffed up in a sort of endearing way. It seems as if they were both enjoying this moment, as the next screen capture has Katsuki reaching out and pulling at the edge of his smile, stretching the soft skin of his cheek.

Then, there’s another one. Izuku huddled on a train seat, looking to the side as if to gauge where the next stop is. The setting is warm and dark, snow flickering against the window, and Katsuki wonders how many of these trips have they taken together, how many of these long-winded moments have they spent together, encased between time and space, willing to cross the land to arrive to a destination. He is wearing a big coat, one that Katsuki assumes might actually be his. The slope of his nose, the edge of his face, those curls of his—pause.

“What the hell is wrong with me,” Katsuki murmurs underneath his breath.

Another one, with Izuku tucked quietly on a plush armchair with a book, ankles crossed. The light is soft and inviting, his body seems warm, Katsuki does not know how he can tell, he just can, as if the memory of it still exists somewhere beyond this vague universe. From this angle, he seems to be just a darling, little thing, settled in, leaning more on his right side. Unconsciously, Katsuki dips his head towards the same side of the armchair, as if to feel the ghost of Izuku’s touch.

Nothing of substance returns, and the night remains cold.

The pictures continue, some are more tender than the others.

Then.

Katsuki swallows.

It is not as if Katsuki would have considered this as confirmation—many relationships contain different ways through which affection can be shown, expressed, or illustrated. But. It seems as if theirs did not contain those kinds of inhibitions.

He does not know how to react, if it would be best to scroll, or to remain still for just a moment longer to take it in.

All that he knows is that the same tight, frazzled feeling overwhelms him at the shameless screen capture his past self had taken—purposefully. These are all back-ups, none of them are unintentional. Izuku is on his knees, cheeks hollowed and hair ruffled while everything else seems grainy through the dim light, although it could not have concealed how deep Katsuki’s cock is stuffed in his mouth. Time seems to flow slowly, heavy with the weight stuck in Katsuki’s throat. Guilty, again, Katsuki scrolls, and the next screen capture shows his beautiful doe eyes fogged with pleasure as he awaits, mouth wide open and tongue lolled out, expression all dazed and lashes curled in the corners, the fine bone in his jawline highlighted delicately through the obscene picture.

Katsuki wipes a hand down his face, intrigued, shocked, taken aback, and most important of all, deeply interested.

There are other scattered pictures, of a kitchen island filled with a great amount of food, still steaming. Another one of an orchard of apples, Izuku up on a ladder all mischievous and eager to give Katsuki an apple that grew to resemble the shape of a heart.

And then, again, whiplash. This time, Izuku is kneeling, ass up, face down, covered by a soaked pair of panties while Katsuki’s thumbing over his folds, dipping the material in.

Another one, Katsuki seems to be placed under, on his back, while Izuku is ready to sit himself down and ride Katsuki’s face: the slight curve that gives way to the spot between the thigh and his ass really take him for a whole spin around the sun. A supernova of realizations. One of the most intimate parts of a human body—Katsuki, mesmerized, traces the curves and the shape, its hypnotizing pink, the glisten of it, the understanding that the feel beyond it is wet and plush. He must still really be into this person, otherwise, there would be no reason for this love to still be in motion, for his interest and arousal to settle down hot and tempered like a stoked fire.

But, if he thought this was giving him a hard time. Well.

The videos come in.

Katsuki already knows all the sweet ones. With a one-track mind, even his system settles on the first inappropriate one, the thumbnail already showcasing an incriminating amount of skin. The room is dark, and for a moment, the video takes a bit to load—fuck, fuck. Then Izuku’s figure cuts through the lamp by the bedside, a simple white camisole covering the upper part of his body, while the bottom part is left completely exposed. An incriminatingly soft, quiet, wet sound spreads along with Izuku’s damp moans, hips rolling and humping down Katsuki’s front, covered by his sweatpants.

“Kacchan, c’mon,” he fervently whispers. “Wanna, wanna have you in me.”

“Holy fucking shit,” Katsuki whispers in real-life.

“Baby, yer dripping all over, I think you’ll be just fine if you keep on going. C’mon.”

Steaming from the back of his scalp until the base of his neck, Katsuki covers his mouth with a fist as if to contain the pure, strangely blinding shock.

“God,” his body arches back, his eyes scrunch shut, beautifully bent with the wind of his desire. “I just wanna, mh, mh, mh…” Then the sounds roll through the same quality of his lewd moans, and the video cuts abruptly.

In too deep, Katsuki moves onto the next one.

This time, Izuku’s face is moving as he gags over Katsuki’s cock. His nose is flushed, button-shaped, lips swollen and puffy, his angel eyes are wet with tears and pleading, entirely settled on Katsuki. “Kacchan,” he coaxes, fluttering his eyelids closed, holding Katsuki still next to his cheek and sliding his beautiful hand up and down, wet sound after wet sound, sweet kiss after sweet kiss pressed atop the crown of his cock.

“Baby,” the Katsuki in the video groans, “look at me.”

Izuku’s honeyed eyes open, tender and eager. His spit pools down, lips so pink. Then, his tongue comes out to play, placing the crown of Katsuki’s cock on the softness of it and rolling his fist over the base, spit pooling erotically down the tip. The entire time, his gaze seems to be sizing Katsuki up, daring him to cum. Cinematically, a fucked-out tear drops down the side of his flushed face, glistening.

There is a stab of something real painful searing through Katsuki, and it must be a feeling that transcends time and space, because the punted-out groan given in the video mirrors the emotion. “Fuuuck. That’s good.”

And the next one.

Seeing it is another thing altogether. Katsuki swallows, faced with the soft petal of his folds, faced with the glisten, the parted thighs, and the syrupy mewls.

Skin on skin, Izuku is holding himself spread wide open, legs bent by the side of his body, looking down as Katsuki furiously jerks himself, aiming at Izuku’s puffy, sopping hole, fucked red and open. They both groan once the first ribbon of cum is aimed directly onto his clit, then pools down to drip. The white then spills all over his smooth, tight stomach, and Izuku moans, hanging his head forward, overwhelmed.

The upcoming footage is shameless, angled from up above.

Izuku’s lips are swollen, puckered around the thumb Katsuki hooked in his mouth. The Katsuki in the video is groaning, pushing his cock in between Izuku’s legs, tucking it underneath his panties, thighs blushed pink. Cum spread on the material, aiding the slide and soaking Izuku entirely, flushed toes curling with every movement in which Katsuki’s cock slips inside on accident. There is an open bottle of lube on the side, a sex toy connected to a cord. It’s wet, glistening, Izuku’s eyes are hypnotizing and, in the video, his own voice groans, “Fuuuck, your pussy,” his voice is rough, angry almost, “’s tiny down here, baby. Wanna have a taste of a real cock, wanna be stretched real good?”

Shocked, Katsuki swallows, unable to take his eyes off. Izuku breathes in deep, affected, and moans lightly.

Emboldened, he no longer skims around the reality of it. He watches and understands that their sex life was nothing if not enthusiastic—the footage has time stamps. Izuku’s been kissed, licked all over, spit on, and bent in five positions under two hours.

Again, the upcoming cut is abrupt.

Multiple scenes stretching on a familiar bed. Izuku on his back, getting pounded while dressed in delicately spun, white lingerie, panties brutishly pushed to the side. Yet another, Izuku riding him while facing away, building up and down the rolling of his hips in loud claps. Then, sprawled open on the carpet, shirt bunched up his armpits, nipples pebbled and peaked, wet pussy stretched wide and fists holding onto the air, barely blinking through the motions, cut-off moans resounding so sweet. Then again, on his knees, on his back, spread wide open, tongue out, pussy bared. Fuck, Katsuki really fucking recorded it all like a pervert.

“Gnh,” Izuku whined, “Kacchan…”

He keeps searching through the entire footage. This time, they are having sex, Izuku is stretched wide open, tummy heaving from just getting fingered, slow, quiet, wet and sticky. He is moaning, slowly heaving, leaking so much. The red, moist head of Katsuki’s cock breaches his pink entrance with a slow thrust. Then, Katsuki watches, enraptured, as Izuku whispers, “Kacchan.” He looks down, dazed as he gives into the fuck of it. “Oh... Oh.”

The imagery is slightly messy, but he seems so open and ready.

“Fuck,” Katsuki whispers in real-life, so enraptured, elbows settled on his thighs, leaning in ahead as if to observe the footage with new clarity.

They fuck hard and fast, the slide rough and steady, while Izuku moans quietly at every single jostle of his body. It is incomparable, everything seems so wet and hot, burning to the touch. Through the whimpers and the hiccups and the tight clamping of Katsuki’s hands over his hips, Izuku never lets Katsuki stray too far. Their intimate hold brings one conclusion: Izuku seems to trust him entirely and wholly. It makes the Katsuki from now crave the feeling, as well.

The screen shuts, while the world seems to grow cold, once again.

Still stuck between a rock and a hard place, Katsuki ponders over everything.

Fuck.

Fuck his life.

Now this will forever be imprinted in his mind. In more ways than one.

Tomorrow still expands under his fingertips with an unknown quality and Katsuki feels, yet again, guilty. He interrupts the desire, refusing to rewind the footage. Instead, he settles to stare into the distance, sleep avoids him and he turns towards the other side of the world to try and push down the temptation. His raging erection got nothing else to offer.

 

#

 

Upon morning.

When he hands over the paper, the guy glances at Katsuki, then at Naoko. “You only ever bring me fucking trouble.”

“Sorry.”

“Just go. Go already.”

 

 

#

 

On the train, Katsuki rewinds through the memories.

Not through the sex, but through the one scene in which Izuku is tucked underneath the sheets. “So, then,” he seems unsure, filled with an air of giddy anticipation, “does that mean you’ll stay with me?” The emotion is grave, intimate.

Katsuki palms the side of Izuku’s face, thumbing over a few stray freckles. The latter blinks an eye shut, smile softly spreading. “For the rest of our lives.”

Although concerning to see the smile drop so quickly, it does not seem to take away from the moment.

“Really?”  Tears coagulate at the edge of his eyes, “Our?”

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere unless we go together.”

“That’s so morbid, Kacchan!” The laughter is as sweet as the first time.

How can it be possible for Katsuki to be so taken by someone who essentially did not exist in real life? Are these memories enough to instill such interest, or is there something screwed in Katsuki’s head? It lingers, it takes away from his concentration, it makes him lock all his muscles and focus on the pain. Pain… because of what? Separation? Katsuki’s ghost seems to haunt him entirely and he wants it so bad, still. The companionship, the touch, the care, their weird little game of push and pull. They did go their separate ways, in the end. And look at him, chasing this.

“This is it,” Naoko tells them. “Todoroki Inc.” She frowns, “How the hell are we gonna get inside?”

“Just walk?” Mayumi suggests.

Fuck, Katsuki’s tired of this back and forth.

“Let’s go.”

Somehow, it feels as if this is it. Todoroki Shouto is a bastard, he decides, with his heterochromatic eyes looking him up and down demanding to know if he truly is Bakugou Katsuki. After long protests, they hook him up to a screen—and, there it is. The silence, the understanding, the expected grimace once Izuku’s moan resounds in the middle of the seven-minute-long footage, the frown that appears once the end approaches.

“This… it really is you. No one else would keep so many memories of Izuku.”

“Oi,” he protests, sort of put on the spot.

“No matter,” he waves a hand around. The girls watch in closely, tired of this back and forth, as well. “I guess I believe you. I’ll take you to him. But first, let me make a call, so he is prepared. Do you… wish to speak to him?”

Naoko falls back onto the rolling chair, fists clenched. “Finally… oh my God…”

Katsuki swallows.

All of a sudden, the world narrows in on him. Does he wish to?

“I’d… I can wait,” he clears his throat. “I needa tell him face to face.”

“Oh, about the memories,” he nods slowly. “It’s good to see you, Bakugou. We have all missed you.”

Through this understanding, it feels sort of surreal, knowing they have reached this point. The line connects. “Izuku, hi. I need to talk to you about something, but first how have you been? Yes, good, thank you. So, I think it’d be best if you were to sit down for a moment. No, I am sorry, it is not a joke, I need to tell you something important—no need to be scared. I…”

The voice drifts, Katsuki paces, a single tremor passes through his fingers. [Protocols initialized. Analysis confirmed: elevated levels of stress. Initiating cooling down process, proceed with the following instructions: deep breaths, focus on the real world, escape the rifted connection between memory and reality. Death is long gone; there is only life left.]

Finally.

Finally.

Katsuki’ll get to find out.

“Sh, sh, it’s okay. No, it’s real. Yes, today. Yes, we will be there. On the phone? No, he said he’d rather see you first. Yes,” a soft laugh, “that is very like him. Don’t cry, he is alright. At least, seems like it.”

Katsuki’s nervous.

He is going haywire. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

His scalp is prickling, the top of his skull is heavy, the air between his ribs is trapped and light and suffocating.

The whole time, he does not know what to expect when Todoroki takes them around some place none of them have discovered before, a tunnel, a flashing light, then, a whole, new world opens before them. A new model, one of those aircrafts tucked underground, not nailed with any insignia he knows of, no Raiden, no nothing. The rock is ridged on the sides, haphazardly dug in, and it confirms that the space is new, still moist with humidity, loud with the electricity humming above them.

“Woah,” Naoko gasps, once the glittering lights tremble.

The whole place is tucked underground, lived in like a lost society, an Atlantis hidden right underneath his nose.

“Don’t be nervous,” Todoroki encourages him. “He knows you better than anyone else. It won’t change anything that you forgot.”

Katsuki does not even have it in him to curse.

There are many unfamiliar faces, regarding him with caution, reading too much into their body language. Instead of gathering underground, Todoroki points onto the metal stairs nailed onto the rock.

“There’s a dock up above, at the other end of the bay. Up there, there’s a metal door. Push it open. Izuku’ll wait for you on the other side. We can talk about the rest later.”

Katsuki nods, absent-minded, and goes up high, and higher.

The door opens, sunlight invades his eyes, the sunset fresh off the horizon line.

At the other end, there is a person idly playing on the surface of the water, crouched down and pressing a few palms down, splashing, rippling over the waves. He seems so much smaller compared to his memories, now that the perspective provides the reality. Once the noise attracts his attention, Katsuki’s feet steadily planted onto the wood of the dock, he turns his head around, eyes glistening with surprise.

There he is. Izuku, the keeper of his most precious memories. The feeling is incomparable, neat, smooth pain piercing through him and, instantly, Katsuki knows.

He never stood a chance.

“Izuku,” he tries to greet.

Suddenly, Izuku is running towards him with an amount of speed and nimbleness that startles even him, and out of nowhere, the mass of his body is up in his arms, trembling through every sob that passes through his blabbering mouth, “You’re back,” sob, “oh my God, I thought those, those monsters really,” sob, a hiccupped noise, suddenly he forgets how to breathe, “when he told me you’re alive I didn’t believe it, I—I really didn’t know what hurt more and I just, couldn’t,” another loud sob rattles his entire frame, the damp sounds and everything, it’s all so honest and unguarded. “I’ve looked everywhere, I did all sorts of research, I, I, I quit the job, I really couldn’t take it, anymore. I hate them so much for what they’ve done to you; I, I was so scared for you. I kept thinking you must be out there, so alone, and I couldn’t reach you…” the sobs become violent, encroaching a deep sorrow.

“Kacchan, I can’t,” he chokes on a sob. “Oh my God I can’t breathe,” he does choke harder, and takes a moment to heave.

Katsuki steps in close, unsure of what to do but softly pat his back as Izuku seems to fight the air trapped in his lungs.

“Oh my God,” he swallows, “oh my God, I think I’m gonna throw up.”

He steps away to crouch down, a fist thumping against the chest. Katsuki follows, sticking close by.

“Izuku… it’s alright. Breathe. Slowly.”

Suddenly, the aforementioned man looks back at Katsuki, and that beautiful, sweet little face scrunches up again.

“Kacchan,” he sobs, throwing himself at Katsuki. They are rolling on the lumber underneath now, and it is disorienting and difficult to resist this push and pull, as Izuku clings onto him for dear life. In the meantime, Katsuki has stepped off the surface of Earth completely, he is floating somewhere in the clouds, finally holding the person of his dreams close again. And yeah, it is snot that Izuku is sniffing back, falling onto Katsuki’s shirt. Gross little nerd. “Where have you been, can you… gosh, I am so relieved,” he uses all his might to squeeze Katsuki in, which is by no means a lot. “I am so, so, so happy to see you. Kacchan, Kacchan, Kacchan,” he rubs the top of his cheek against his chest, back and forth. “Talk to me, please,” he sobs, “have you been well?”

Katsuki swallows, throat clicking dryly.

His hands circle around Izuku’s body, pressing the lithe frame closer to himself, feeling over the accelerated pulse, the distressed signals.

“Yeah,” he offers softly. “I missed you.”

Izuku laughs softly, his body spasming from another sob, “R—really?”

“Izuku, let’s get up, yeah? It’ll help you breathe.”

“No,” he refuses to let go.

“C’mon,” he whispers, unsure, barely landing back on earth, “Izuku.”

A sniffle comes in, quiet and suppressed, but Izuku still braves himself for everything, and leaves their warm, aggressive embrace.

“Fine.”

And they do part, Izuku sits back, kneeling over the docks, while Katsuki slowly regains stability and takes in everything—it feels surreal, so detached from reality Katsuki is sure he must be dreaming. It is a great feeling, and maybe he really does not need sleep for it to happen. Everything around them is gone, silent, and tender, affording them a moment of intimacy and reprieve.

“You better now?”

It truly is strange to have Izuku in front of him now, not just a memory trapped in a screen. The dimples that deepen his cheeks are more prominent, the freckles cluster higher and richer atop the edge of his face, there’s a few scattered ones by the side of his lip, along with that mole Katsuki remembers vividly. The edge of those shoulders is encased by a suspiciously dark hoodie that does not seem to fit him at all. He seems soft, small, weepy, and exhausted.

“Yeah,” the voice is hoarse, “my,” then his lips press together, sticking softly, swollen red. While looking at him, those eyebrows of his scrunch softly, almost shy. “Kacchan… you… seem different. Somehow.”

Ah.

Of course, he would notice.

This seems as good a place as any to start.

“I gotta tell you somethin’.”

Silence. Izuku, unsure, nods along.

“Go on…”

“All of my memories are gone.”

It does not seem to shatter any of the regard Izuku holds for him, his soft disposition remains the same, he does not pull away.

But still, Izuku takes a shuddering breath in. “Okay…” It seems dangerous, Izuku teetering on the edge of crying again. “Okay, okay, okay…”

“But it don’t mean things’ll change,” he promises fiercely, trapping the cold side of Izuku’s hand in his. “…That much.”

Izuku glances down, surprised, mouth shaping down, “What are you—”

“I didn’t know anything. I only knew m’name and what this world is and why apples fall from trees and shit like that. But I also knew you,” the frown is easily transposing his curiosity, his need to get closer. “There were so many memories of you, and I saw you through them. But I don’t really know you. I don’t know us…”

“I suppose not…” Tears gather once again in Izuku’s eyes. “Oh, Kacchan,” he whispers, pained, “it must’ve been tough for you.” He says so while patting a warm, delicate hand atop his shoulder blades, rubbing softly as if to soothe.

“Nah,” Katsuki’s eyebrows twitch with what must be his first honest smile, “but I need to know,” Katsuki reaches out. “You’re… important to me, aren’t you? You were the only part I saved in my system. Do you think…” a slow swallow, “we could relearn that all over again?”

The tears really do spill over, and the unusual thing is that Izuku laughs, wiping away from the rounded dip of his cheeks.

“Let’s get out of here first, yeah?” There’s a relieved edge to his brow, but the smile is bittersweet. “I’m really happy to see you, Kacchan.”

“I know. Me too.”

Izuku smiles wider. And it feels new.

 

#

 

Well, for things to come together, they must fall apart in some way.

Katsuki gets the debrief and parts ways with Izuku for a moment, encouraged to step back in.

“Bakugou, welcome. You must be curious about how all this… came to be. There’s not much I can say about it,” Todoroki says, sighing. At the other end there are a few more curious people, watching in closely as Katsuki takes a seat at the rounded table. The neon up above steadily hums in a whitewashed light, not blue in the slightest. “Ashido here was your dispatcher most of the time and the things, well, she knows best.”

Yellow-brown eyes, a head of curly hair, dyed pink and bubbly.

She sniffs.

“It’s good to see you,” she nods, then her mouth forms around a small, hesitant sigh. “Um, you must know by now. Raiden, big bag company, woo,” she passively imitates a shiver, “but um. It didn’t seem like that at the beginning. We worked together a lot, and the things we’ve seen, well, it radicalized a lot of us. You included.”

Katsuki frowns.

Halfway through it all, Katsuki sort of understands now.

Young soldier, growing up in the middle of it all, invaded autonomy, robotic enhancements, a well-planned out strategy. Accidents, floods, disasters, experiments, undercover missions—Katsuki did it all. Their executioner, framed as a hero, meant to maintain peace, successor of All Might, but the one who bears the brand of the new world. The scar on his cheek hangs heavy over the old inscription.

“All Might never worked under RINC, that’s why things were different.”

“Why’d I have to?”

“You were bound by it, by the rules, the regulations, your whole project was funded and streamlined by Raiden. You might be superhuman, but you know. A bullet still pierces through.”

Katsuki hums. He was top of the line, their cutting-edge technology, an acquired taste. But it had not been enough, they got greedy, they—the door opens. Interest worms its way under his skin, he straightens, attention snagged away. In the middle of all these words, Izuku tiptoes in, softly holding onto the door frame and taking a seat with a little, apologetic smile. The entire time, Katsuki’s eyes stay stuck on him.

There is restlessness pooling slowly in his mind.

His hands have a few light scars on them, small like cat-scratches, lips swollen and nose sloped softly, a bit round on the uptake. None of the other humans he has met are even half as captivating as him, with his dark hair and light eyes and steady, careful words. He seems kind, even from over here.

“—that’s. Katsuki? Katsuki. Did you hear me?”

It’s Naoko that cuts through his mind’s fog.

“What?”

Izuku seems surprised to find his eyes stuck on him, and averts his gaze, smiling incredulously underneath his breath.

[Error! Overheating in progress, initializing cooling down protocols.]

Katsuki swallows, the surface of his skin warming up. Every other person’s looking at him, waiting for Katsuki to tap back into reality.

“Go ahead,” he clears his throat. The entire time, he fights the urge to look back.

“We don’t expect you to ever wish to come back there,” Todoroki explained. “A lot has happened, and revolutions may come with ease and bravery, but what remains after is always the hardest part to go through, and we haven’t even made all the progress, yet. You have endured a lot and we all believe that if you wish to take a reprise here, you’re more than welcome to.”

Katsuki does not know what it is that needs to be done. Not like he remembers any of that bullshit anyway.

“I’ll be fine,” he sighs, as a response.

But then, the story begins to form coherence. A normal progression of events. Katsuki, loyal, gets poked, discarded, threatened. Greed overwhelms them, just like it had overwhelmed this world, and they want more. They wish to clone him, dispose of the system that offers androids the choice of free thought, take it away, then make an army of them. Katsuki knows, he understands, even. The protests spread around the city down below were few and in between but that did not take away from the weight of it. None of it does.

He cannot imagine what life is like up in the clouds.

Somehow, Katsuki cannot shake away the feeling that more of the story remains unveiled. Again, he wants to stray away, see what Izuku might be thinking, but he is surprised to see those green eyes already set on him. Katsuki steadies himself and averts his gaze.

With a few acknowledgments, light conversation spreads over the room as Katsuki, Naoko, and Mayumi are left to mule over it all. From the corner of his vision, Izuku draws in closer, tilting his head sideways to gauge the expression that may be hidden on Katsuki’s face. The proximity stuns him, and he remains still.

“Are you doing alright? I know this must’ve been a lot for you to take in.”

“It’s fine,” he grunts. “’S not hard to figure out what happened.”

“Mm,” a hum, an interested shine in his eyes, a light sheen across those lashes. “Did this give you the answers you were looking for?”

Slowly, he rove all over Izuku’s face. Over the rounded cupid’s bow, the splatter of freckles, the deep pool of his glistening eyes. He swallows, again. “No.”

“No?”

Emboldened, Katsuki steps in, rumbling on the, “No. It really didn’t.”

“Oh,” a quiet blink. “I see.”

As if through a trance, they watch each other.

“Okay! How about dinner?” Ashido announces loudly.

The trance breaks.

And so it goes.

Later, Todoroki approaches him in the canteen, while the rest of the people dig into their metal trays. After some time, he realized that the place is reserved for people who are very much like them, running from the old aggression of their past lives. Children clamor around the room, deserting soldiers, the tired workers who breached the contract and refused to be a part of that grand scheme of hardship.

“So,” he says with a lack of finesse. “I guess you haven’t talked to Izuku yet. Not properly, at least.”

Naoko stops mid-chew. Mayumi pretends not to listen. None of them comment on how Katsuki’s side of the bench is empty.

“Mind yer business.”

“Hm.”

The bastard leaves.

“No,” Katsuki says soon as Naoko opens her mouth.

“Damn, okay.”

All the other people he met slowly make their way over, reintroducing themselves, some of them brazen enough to ask if there was any recollection of them in Katsuki’s system. Each time, they do not seem entirely put off by how he does not—he files their name away for later, storing them away. Kirishima is an engineer, also, and teaches Naoko how to configure Katsuki’s system up to one hundred, helps with all the glitchy memories, so they do not project themselves onto his optical sensors, so reality will not become clouded by shredded smoke. But then, the dreaded moment comes. In which they have to filter through Katsuki’s memories. He reconfigures his settings, separates them again, locking away the ones painted with Izuku’s tender loving.

Still, there is not that much left.

On the day it happens, they dim the lights down low in their vacant meeting room and sit around the blue projector in the dark and watch Katsuki spill out his one secret. In order to see those quarters, the clues his memory might have left behind, they need to watch and skim through his relentless chasing. There it is again, Izuku laughing, spinning in the rain, blowing soap bubbles over the sink, fastening a necklace around Katsuki’s neck, crying softly, teasing, loving, special.

There is no loud reaction, the silence is sort of stifling, and Katsuki remains hooked onto the projector as it all plays out before them, the same seven minutes. He roves over the room, over their serious faces, their pitiful frowns. Even so, he can see it all through the darkness, Izuku tucking a sleeve against his nose, those tears that glisten, those quiet sniffs of his and the dimpled surface of his chin, fighting to keep up a brave front. It’s sweet, Katsuki decides, and sort of expected.

“Hey,” Katsuki calls out, straightening away from the door as the people trickle away and Izuku’s the last one to join.

“Oh,” he notices, with delight, that Katsuki’s been waiting for him. “Kacchan! Hello.”

“You good?” He flicks his chin down towards Izuku, the curve of his lash line is pink and tender, the edges lined with indents of all the salt that’s burned through.

“Ah,” he laughs, stilted and soft, avoiding Katsuki’s inquisitive observation. “You’ve noticed, huh? Sorry, I guess I couldn’t help it.” Again, as if he could not help it, his palm reaches out to feel over the front of Katsuki’s elbow, slowly rubbing there. “Does it hurt? I remember when I had to get a blood transfusion and they hooked me on a big needle, there’s no way that thing would be comfortable.”

Swallowing, Katsuki looks down, overtaken by the differences between them. The little freckles and the soft scars, the way he needs to glance down to take in the flutter of his eyes, so they could face one another.

“’S fine,” he almost shivers through the grunt, Izuku’s finger pad prodding and roving over the thin skin. “I ain’t fragile.”

Izuku seems to pout, and in a daze, he leans the side of his temple against Katsuki’s bicep, as if to take in their proximity for a moment.

“You always say the same thing,” he complains under his breath, spoiled and thick with tendrils of sadness. “I feel so guilty,” he confesses. “If I had shown you more pretty things, you would’ve had more happy memories to look back onto,” he separates himself from Katsuki, that little touch is gone, the surface of his skin dents with the ghost of it.

Katsuki squints into the distance, licking his teeth, fighting through the ball in his throat to spill out the words. “Y’were plenty pretty.”

Izuku jolts, opens his mouth around a few empty vowels.

“Kacchan, don’t tell me…” he looks all over Katsuki.

A swallow. They get stuck in the slow honey of it.

There is the old darkness fading away, light purges everything in its path, and something tender and safe closes around Katsuki’s heart, yet another promise. Drunk on it, Katsuki reaches to knock a knuckle against the curl brushing Izuku’s cheek.

Kitten-like, he blinks, and leans in.

“Woo!”

“Nah, that’s what he said last time…”

“Just ‘cause he said it? Man, you’re weak.”

Distant chatter and heavy footsteps make them jolt, breaking apart and shattering the moment. The soft, searing light transversing through Katsuki is unknown, incomparable, and something that only the soft nibbling of Izuku’s tooth over his own lip could have induced. Then, it seems as if the chasm shortens its distance, and leaping over the sharp, dark mouth of it does not seem as intimidating as it no longer glints like a sickle.

In the evening, they sat side by side, watching over the water, no words exchanged. Somehow, it was enough.

The next few days are spent with Katsuki familiarizing himself with the ship, with the people, with the water up above. Naoko spends her time analyzing each gadget, while Mayumi follows around idly, taking notes onto what this place is, a center essentially reserved for fugitives or for those in need of a community far away from the icy clutches of the world up above.

Katsuki does not give a fuck. The entire time, he chases Izuku’s trail.

At first, he is soft and politely distant, a small weepy smile pointed his way each time they stick close together. The affection is present, but he is careful. Should Katsuki talk about everything else that he knows? The tapes. Videos. Memories?

Shameless, his eyes never stray too far. It’s so hard for him to be aware of his surroundings when every tantalizing strip of skin remains stuck on his mind. Izuku’s cheeks flush with new life, sleeping more, laughing more, touchier with each day that comes. Katsuki is guilty of the way his gaze roves every nook and cranny, guilty over how the desire pools low in his being after familiarizing themselves with each other again and it’s, yeah. Inevitable.

Today, his Izuku made it real hard for him.

Crouching down and smiling real big at him, along with the little curve in his back and the shape of his mouth. As much of a precious thing as he is, he has seen all about what he’s like in the throes of desire, spread open, eager to be taken, and it is hard to not look back. Katsuki is a horrible fucking person, knowing that when Izuku softly helps him unclasp the garter that stops all circulation past his bicep, all he is thinking about is pressing those delicate palms onto his naked abdomen and bringing ‘em down low.

“Is it too tight?” Izuku checks the vial of ozone hooked underneath his skin.

“Nah, ‘s fine.”

He even got his own little nurse, trained with the years spent on Katsuki’s maintenance. That was another fucking mind-blowing thing. How long they have known each other.

“Maintenance is not as easy to do without the pod, but you know.” The room is separated from the rest, stacked above as an infirmary, designed with all basic appliances to heal the remaining wounds of someone whose arteries are filled with ichor, such as Katsuki and the other androids.

Katsuki swallows around the crumpled stone of want stuck in his throat.

“Yeah,” he scrunches up his brows in discomfort. The previous maintenances went well, but months of sea salt damage to his system show its consequences.

“Ah, sorry,” Izuku leans in, trying to configure something. His head is right below his chin, the shampoo and the heat of his body right there, the edge of his pillowed thighs pressing into Katsuki’s hips as he rose for the wire behind. “This should make it easier.”

It’s just making it harder. Actually.

“Thanks.”

Katsuki gives in around the fourth time.

Whoever thought it’d be a good idea to stick him and Izuku together during his rehabilitation time was fucking crazy. It’s true, the soreness of his joints slowly started to ebb away, but seeing Izuku in shorts and a drapey, thin cotton shirt could only influence another part of his—fuck. It did not help how eager and keen Izuku is to help and to press his soft body against him. Izuku cannot help the way the material slips down his thighs, or how his knees flush upon the first contact with the floor, or how his cute, stripped socks always slip down the left ankle. Nor can he help Katsuki’s desperation.

When he aids Katsuki with muscle relief therapy, he sticks the patches onto his naked back and presses one knee down before his seat to hook the wire onto his wrist.

“Deep breath in,” Izuku instructs kindly. The pinprick of the needle is muted, but if Izuku were to not be worried about him, then the care and attention could slip away from his fingers. Katsuki wishes to play the part in the meantime. “Okay, Kacchan. You can exhale now.”

The dip in his waist opens his collar, and suddenly, Katsuki can see down his chest. The smooth, peachy nipples, the dip in his soft belly, the tantalizing slope of his waist, an infinite amount of possibilities. A small gem glints in his bellybutton—that’s new. The want kicks him straight in the teeth, imagination running wild, hands on his smooth, no. No.

On the exhale, the air undulates with his restlessness.

And then, honestly, Katsuki doesn’t even remember the motive behind his breaking point. Maybe the closeness really got to him, or maybe it was the swollen side of his lip after the cold breeze hit them in the face, or the flushed nose and the little cheeky push, body hanging onto his bicep upon their little stroll. The closeness he craves most, that’s what always gets to him. That’s what makes it hard. That’s what gets him raging against the zipper.

Back when there were only the videos, the urges were easier to bury.

But now.

Slamming the door in the bathroom, Katsuki gives in, barely tucking himself out in time to catch the drooling precum there, following the way it hung heavy and slipped down in a slow drip. Fuck. Katsuki grits his teeth; it’s the first time he has allowed this kind of touch to be explored. The experience lays in videos and vague memories, but Izuku’s cheeks flushed pink in the sun and it’s, fuck, Katsuki’s self-control has been fraying for a while. Few days in his vicinity were enough.

Now, the first touch on his cock feels like a burn, a brand.

Guilty, fuck, he knows how this would look, but he still accesses the folder. Although a shadow of their past life, fuck, it’s still not Katsuki’s right to do this shit, they are not like that right now. But the guilt simmers on a low boil, easy to depart from once the video he chose pops on, his favorite out of the collection. It must’ve been summer outside. Izuku’s shirt was frilly and picnic checkered and bunched up over smooth skin. The sighs were split, quiet gasps pouring out while getting fucked into steadily, crowded and squished against the couch, body jostling with each thrust, legs folded up.

Katsuki’s hands are tucked in between the soft part that hides underneath his knee, testing the stretch, feeling every tremble that passes through Izuku’s body. And he cannot stop staring through the corrupted footage, cannot stop watching the gushy give of his pussy, or the way his tummy rolls in on itself, even his toes are flushed pink. Through the whole mind-numbing feeling, Izuku’s eyes are set in the space between their bodies, frowning, mouth parted earnestly on the feeling.

Guilty, once again, he reimagines it slightly. Paints the flushed cheeks of today over the image, and the upstroke burns away the shame. Fuck, the desperation parts his mouth, sticks onto his lips, drying them up.

His cock drools over the toilet bowl in segmented pumps, his palm braces against the granite, cold to the touch and serving as a reminder to press a tongue against his lip, parched from the panting. Fuck, if his own hand drives him to a hysteric pace, he cannot imagine what Izuku’s would be like. Or the soft press of his mouth, his thighs, his—fuck—his pussy.

At the thought, Katsuki groans.

When the string breaks, he pushes up, imagining what’d be like to cum inside. Fuck, Izuku always let him. Even when his pussy was beat red, he always squirmed on his cock and pulsed visibly, welcoming the ropes that now spill messily over the side of his fist.

“Fuck,” Katsuki whispers to himself, vision blanking for a moment. “Fuck.”

His face warms underneath the steam of the shower, the post-orgasm clarity hitting like a truck.

Katsuki washes away the guilt with the waves.

More information is offered at their disposal, but Katsuki is not too interested in their psychological warfare. Emotions may bind him to his past life, but it does not mean they will push him forward to act, to further expand their hold over him. They do not disclose their plans entirely, but Katsuki ain’t no canon fodder, he can read between the lines, he knows all about the rising number of angry people, as Raiden has loses more and more trust with the slow progression of Katsuki’s disappearance.

Times are difficult.

“Hi,” Izuku greets, taking a seat by the water next to Katsuki. Somehow, he always knew how to find his way around this space, how to burrow in close. “You used to hate the water before,” he wistfully proclaims.

“Yeah?”

Now, when he thinks about it, he imagines those segmented moments in which he floated aimlessly before he awakened, all the salt, the breeze, the fish. For months he had been drifting in and out with no escape, but now, he can watch beyond the horizon and refuse to sink.

“Guess it doesn’t really bother you, anymore, huh? Well, change happens all the time. It’s just the nature of things.”

There are thousands of words left unspoken, but yet again, Izuku’s careful through the heavy silence.

“Guess so.”

Katsuki feels sort of desperate to close in the distance.

They spend their lunches together, they walk through the sliding doors while making small talk, and the distance seems to close in. Still, Katsuki cannot get enough. Izuku pushes a delicate hand against his shoulder after a crass joke, his body’s warm even when spaced a few inches away, he is eager to get to know what Katsuki’s been up to. And it’s not enough. They both know this is building towards something else, a secret of some sort, towards their old relationship, one that cannot be replicated so easily now that Katsuki’s lost it all. He is afraid that he will not get to love Izuku the same way, anymore. At least, not in a way that matters, not in a way that Izuku can understand.

Their hands brush underneath the table.

It’s never enough.

“Hi? I didn’t expect to see you here.”

The door to Izuku’s room slid open. Fuck, his feet took him here by accident.

“I…”

“Come on in. I haven’t seen you the whole day.”

Unsure, Katsuki does. Compared to his own room, this one is filled to the brim. Lavish, vintage lamps glittering in the shape of tulips, a fluffed carpet, a room divider inked with pink lilies, silken clothes, patterns and curtains and a rounded mirror, an old record player, fluff and feathers laying around as if he got shoved in the lamp of a genie, as if he is tucked in the warmth of a beating heart. The outside was cold and blue in comparison.

“Damn,” Katsuki murmurs, flicking a knuckle against one of the ceramic cats lined steadily atop the vanity. “You a hoarder or somethin’?”

Izuku flutters around the room, laughing. “Or something. First time we met, you also said the same thing. Here, sit, sit, go.” Katsuki finds himself being pushed into a corner where cushions are stacked upon each other, a reading spot of some kind, all magenta and blushed with interminable colors. “I was just having tea,” he kindly offers. “Should we have some together?”

Weak, Katsuki simply agrees.

Knees tucked on the fluffy floor, Izuku watches in carefully as he pours the hot water in.

“Thanks,” he grunts, stilted around the edges.

Even the bed is artfully filled with cushions, round instead of the usual trapezoid shape Katsuki familiarized himself with. The darkness would often glint in violet and red hues back in his memories, even getting stuck on the shapes behind his teeth, but there is no room for it in here. Izuku draws in closer, hands tucked politely in his lap, facing Katsuki. They paint a different picture, Katsuki lounging back, dressed in clothes that got him called a hooligan out in the streets, scar marring the edge of his face, while Izuku is tucked in soft sleep clothes, cheeks curved with affection.

“So,” the words are spoken softly, a nervous little wiggle follows as he settles in closer. “How are you? Couldn’t sleep?”

Katsuki frowns.

“I never sleep.”

“I see,” he nods slowly, taking it in patiently. “Actually. It’s something that you can do, if you wish to try it out. You told me your system goes into lockdown, once you allow it to, and then, it sort of imitates rest.”

Unsure, Katsuki looks down over the ripples in his tea.

“But that’s not why you came over, is it?” So, so soft, that mouth of his, the words that follow.

Katsuki swallows, stuck in it. God, he wishes to come closer.

“It’s. I didn’t know where else to go.”

The words melt into Izuku, shoulders coming loose with tension. The edge of his face is haloed out by the light, and it is so easy to follow the whirlwind of his expressions—guilt, sadness, endearment.

“Oh, Kacchan, can I.” He leans over the cushions, base of his palms holding his weight still. “Can I come closer?”

Katsuki swallows, face warming slowly.

“C’mere.”

Izuku shuffles in, kneeling over his thighs and pressing Katsuki’s head against his sternum, engulfing him in a clumsy hug, allowing the touch to sear through him. Slowly, he loses himself to it, to the closeness, the heartbeat. He sinks entirely, fogged with desire. Behaving himself, the expanse of his palms simply caresses the curve of his hips, slowly skating up, feeling over the bone, then back down around the waist.

“Kacchan,” a mumble, vibrating through the top of his head. “I’m so relieved you found your way back to me.”

“Hm,” he grunts, close to falling asleep. This is what it must feel like. “Even though I ain’t him?”

As if breaking through the surface of water, Katsuki is suddenly swayed, awakened by Izuku as his body is plucked away. Hands cup the sides of his jaw, and the curious blinks bring him face to face with Izuku’s slanted eyebrows, his angel eyes glinting with a poignant melancholy, a softness spread through it all. Now, Katsuki jolts awake, and flounders, feeling all over that softness of his in order to soothe.

“You’ve got it all wrong,” he insists, fierce and protective. “Kacchan, how could you ever—no,” a sniffle, a sweet sigh follows. “I should’ve made it clear from the beginning, but nothing has to change, or everything could change, I, I truly don’t care and I don’t know a lot of stuff, and I don’t think I could ever know everything. But one thing I know for sure is that you’re him, and he’s you, and you’re both Kacchan. My Kacchan.”

As if his strings were cut, Katsuki melts in. “Izuku,” he rasps, affected.

Restless, he squeezes over his hips, the silk spilling through the gaps of his fingers.

“You died,” the swallow is heavy, forged with grief, soft and sticky with the oncoming tears. “I could never fault for that,” a silly little laugh blunders out of him messily. “That’d be insane.” Izuku gets it so well, able to bewitch him with a few words, cage his body in the tenderness of him. “But I was afraid that you won’t look at me the same if we were to see each other again, and I couldn’t, I was prepared for the worst.”

They part, and Katsuki quite enjoys the view—the curve of his thighs, the dip in his waist, the beautiful flutter of those wispy, dark lashes. No recent memory of his maintained recollection of such intimacy. It’s warm. Katsuki is completely overtaken by him, while something buoyant and new rises inside.

“I’m sorry,” Katsuki feels compelled to say, quietly, in this space. Curious, a finger reaches for the curl that sticks crooked out of Izuku’s bangs. “I ended up forgettin’.”

“I don’t care,” he denies while blinking and sniveling through it.

“But I wanna remember,” Katsuki says. “I wanna know what it was like for you,” insistent, Katsuki tucks him in, until Izuku sits over Katsuki’s lap entirely, huffing with the molten heat, breathless. It does not leave any room for doubt, the need is undeniable. Greedy, he feels over how Izuku’s spine arches into the center of it, squirming and tensing his thighs in what can only be arousal, because the same sensation simmers underneath Katsuki.

From what he has seen, the two of them were the kind of people that always reveled in the touch, the closeness, the wet giving of their bodies. Sooner or later, this need would have resurfaced. For now, he basks in the tension, hanging onto every movement.

“They said it was strange,” he swallows, frowning, nails scraping at the back of Katsuki’s neck, “how you would always act by yourself. No matter what they programmed, you had a will of your own. Hatsume took me aside one time and told me it was the first time she had ever been scared of what she had created, not because of you, I don’t think. But because she couldn’t recreate you, and I, of course, never doubted it. I always knew you were special.”

“Yeah?” He swallows, gazing up. Izuku follows the movement with heavy interest. “What did y’think makes one alive?”

“I don’t know…” he shrugs, smiling slightly. “’S just a feeling, I guess. Can’t really explain it well.”

“Y’can try with the beginnin’. I wanna know,” he insists, clutching onto Izuku’s thighs, tucking his head down, pillowing a cheek against his sternum. “I want ya to tell me all about it.”

“Well...” Izuku whispers, scratching through Katsuki’s scalp. “How should I start... it began with a simple phrase, you know. You said this is what they’ve always told you...”

 

 

 

 

Notes:

whew i cannot help but think i made em kinda freaky for each other.. oh well! naoko in the front, “ummm they asked for no pickles please.”

129TIOUITW – his model is izuku’s number and the initials mean “there is only us in this world”